RESOURCES

There are around 400 veg/an communities in North America, most in the forming stage. The VegNet RESOURCES page is about veg/an groups, communities and individuals sharing ideas and information with others in the larger veg/an community about communities, especially about forming them, building them, maintaining them - and enjoying and thriving in the process!

• Check the COMMUNITIES page for names and contact info of veg/an communities, forming and existing.
• Check the ECO-DEVELOPMENT page for ideas on developing land and housing in a green way, and formulating a new approach to finance.
• See the LINKS page for resources that may be of interest to you personally - food issues, the environment, health/illness, recreation, spirituality, and more.
• Go to the VEG ADS page for announcements about land available for veg/an community and for personal ads re veg/an communities.
• Look at the TRIATHLON page for links to well-established veg/an communities around the world, many of which welcome visitors, volunteers and new members. Most of these communities are not listed at ic.org - and are therefore not listed on our COMMUNITIES page.

The RESOURCES are grouped alphabetically by topic - and we add topics as you request them. We also keep adding and modifying, so visit periodically.

• ACQUIRING LAND
• AFFORDABILITY
• INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY WEBSITES
• THE SEARCH
• VEGNET CHOICE READING

Feel free to send VegNet information about interesting / inspiring / helpful ideas, articles, magazines, books, CDs, DVDs and people, as well as links to websites. Any entries (below) with quotes are submitted by VegNet readers - contact info is given in parentheses at the end of the entry, unless anonymity was requested.

ACQUIRING LAND

As far as evaluating the actual land and buildings, you’ll want to consider the location. I have been to some homesteader places.... You needed a four wheel drive to get in and out and the terrain and roads can be quite steep, lots of up and down. You’ll have to consider how difficult it is to get to town, can someone commute to work? Those kinds of things.

What condition are the buildings? Do they need a lot of maintenance and renovation? How well built are they or are they crude “old school hippie” houses that won’t last? What is the infrastructure - like, water, roads, electricity etc?

I can imagine that a poor infrastructure and a remote location that makes it difficult for the members to live comfortably can put a strain in relationships. Ultimately it is the relationships that will make or break the survival of the community. How good are you at resolving petty disputes? A small community where everyone is up in each others' business can make mountains out of molehills or be like a piece of gravel in your shoe, relatively insignificant but aggravating nevertheless. [From a member of The Farm, submitted 8/07 by Zia at vegan.mania@cox.net, founding member of the new Meadowcreek vegan community in Fox, Arkansas]

Acquiring land feels like one of the most challenging hurdles for a would-be community. How many viable ways are there to go about it? The more ways you can come up with, the better! Why? Because there are about 400 veg/an communities out there right now in the forming stage, many of them bogged down by having plenty of interested people but not enough money to buy land and build housing. If your group is trying out an idea that is grounded, businesslike but unconventional, send it to VegNet so we can share it with others!      aslvvc@yahoo.com

Here are suggestions received so far:

1.   Read Chapter 3, "Getting Off to a Good Start," in the book Creating a Life Together (Diana Leafe Christian): it lists a whole range of options, gives examples of communities that have followed those routes, and makes additional suggestions about what to be aware of and how to avoid potential conflict situations. Contact the community mentioned - they may be willing to advise you further about the particular method they used.

2.   Partner up with an eco-development company. They will co-finance the land, development and building of housing. Caution: Your group needs to be very clear what your vision / mission / intentions / long-term goals are - create a draft of your official by-laws before you commit to a developer.  And contact a couple of communities that went this route - they may be willing to advise you further about the best way to partner in this way.

• If you have eco concerns, choose an eco-developer, not a conventional developer, and find practical solutions with them for what is important to your community:  non-toxic housing? small footprint?  peripheral parking/pedestrian community?  open space?  organic permaculture approach with recycling of grey/black water?  permanently affordable housing?
• The development company will naturally need to sell the housing quickly to recoup its investment and will probably farm the job out to real estate agents around the country. Or you can arrange to advertize in Cohousing and Communities magazines so new members are fully aware of your by-laws.  It's a recipe for disaster if half the community buys in expecting nothing other than a house in a secure neighbourhood - while the other half are founding members of an intentional community with all kinds of member agreements in place. This happened in a Tucson community, so beware!

3.   Lease, loan, gift or land trust

• Look for a founding member who owns or inherits property and is willing to set up a trust, or donate all or part of the land to the community. "They don't exist," did you say? Sure they do - look on the VegAds page!
• Make sure the legal agreement and member power is clearly stipulated in writing. See Christian, Creating a Life Together, for some basic commonsense cautions.
• Equity Trust, Inc.   www.equitytrust.org   provides low-interest loans to grassroots groups and unconventional groups like intentional communities - but you need to have something in place and not rely on them for 100% of your funding. See #5 below.
• Is there a way to develop an organic farm-based community on BLM land?  especially a community that commits to restoring and preserving the ecosystem... Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers 261 million acres of public lands, mostly in the western US and Alaska. Land usage ranges from wilderness to roads to leasing thousands of acres to ranchers for cattle grazing (and cutting down trees). So why not approach the BLM Action Center and sow some good seed with a well thought out proposal!       http://www.wilderness.org/OurIssues/BLM/index.cfm?TopLevel=Home

4.   Joining fees     may enable you to buy the land outright or give you enough to make a downpayment (50%) and keep in hand the first year's worth of monthly payments. The fee structure could be based on income and assets, yet is flexible enough to include members with a variety of skills but no savings / income - they may become the backbone of your community but have not chosen to follow a life path that includes savings accounts, assets and big incomes.  Here's one possible scenario:

• To become a funding member, each person contributes a decided-on amount - example: $20,000 down and $100/month.
• If you can't afford that much, you become a committed member, each one contributing $1,000 to $5,000 down (if necessary, borrow from family, 10 friends...) and $100/month.
• If you have no savings, no income and no friends/family willing or able to lend, you have several options: you borrow from a community member; you get a job and make monthly payments towards becoming a "committed member"; you become a labour credits member, working full-time on site in return for simple accommodation, food and pocket money until you have accumulated enough extra labour hours to "pay" for the equivalent of being a committed member.
• Depending on the size and cost of the property, and whether it is raw or somewhat developed: out of the large group of "interested people" in your group, the community will probably need at least 11 funding members and 21 committed members - allowing some financial flexibility in case people drop out along the way - and 20 or more labour credits members (who might be the spouses of committed or funding members).
• Your group may be fortunate enough to include one or more people (or friends) who are benefactors, willing to invest in the community, providing long-term low-interest or no-interest loans towards buying, developing and building the first structures.

5.   Smorgasborg, veg/an style

• What if your group has 1 funding member, 2 committed members and 30 labour credits members? Great! You will probably need to combine various resources so you don't rely too heavily on any one of them. For a start, combine the above 4 suggestions in different ways and see what you come up with. Your group is unique - your financial solution may need to reflect that. Existing communities have often handled it in unusual but businesslike ways - so read up on how they did it, brainstorm the ideas, be practical - and have confidence: it can be done!

AFFORDABILITY

Resources

• Equity Trust, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded by Chuck Mathei in 1991. ETI provides ideas, technological input and low-interest loans - and their purpose is to support grassroots groups and farmers in the US and elsewhere to find unusual solutions for the land / food / affordable housing challenge many of us face today.
• One option ETI recommends and supports is for a group to form a Community Land Trust (CLT), allowing you to combine preservation of open space with affordable housing and organic agriculture. What a great resource!
• As communitarians and forming / existing communities, we can empower organizations like ETI, who exist to empower us  -  by supporting them. It's a win-win "green" community investment, whether we contribute a small monthly donation as moral support for what they are doing, or nudge a wealthy friend into investing a sizeable chunk.       http://www.equitytrust.org/ForBorrowers_06.htm

Keeping the cost down and the aesthetics up

• "What I have seen are these tiny houses - $30,000 on wheels good to go, now being custom built. And then yurts can be really great - which can be delivered and put up quite easily - the smallest is $10,000."   (rmorkat@aol.com)
  • TUMBLEWEED TINY HOUSE COMPANY     http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/home.htm  
  • PACIFIC YURTS     http://www.yurts.com/

  [thanks Ann Watters for the Tumbleweed and Pacific Yurts links!]

  • "YURT MAGIC"     by Claire Wolfe, online Backwoods Home Magazine http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/wolfe76.html 

• Michael Blate on "clustered housing shells" at http://www.vegfamily.com/articles/vegan-eco-communities.htm

• Bill and Athena Steen - pioneers in the strawbale housing movement and authors of several books on strawbale buildings - have built a 1-bedroom strawbale house, about 1000 sf with kitchen, living room, porches, additional sleeping loft and simple bathroom, for about $25,000 (using recycled windows, doors) on their property in Canelo, AZ. Real houses - beautiful ones at that - can be built for a fairly reasonable amount of money. With sweat labour, of course, and help from your friends.    www.CaneloProject.com

Simple & economical

• One veg/an group is thinking of buying "5th wheels with triple slides. They are $100k and up but due to gas prices you can get one for $27k. The other advantage of a 5th wheel is that you can get a company to transport an RV for $750 to $1,000 depending on where you want to go. So, for example, the group could own a couple acres in Arizona and also in Oregon/Washington. Then you could have your 5th wheel moved twice a year if you wanted. Only expense to group would be to prepare land with septic, power & water."
• "Also, there are a number of vegans who have donated most of their money to animal rescue and are living on a shoestring. They could just start out with a simple RV for as low as $10K and rent the land instead of buying into it. Then they would have a safe affordable place to live out their lives in community without a lot of up-front $$."  (VeganMania@cox.net)

• COOPERATIVELY OWNED MOBILE HOME PARK: The Eastgate Community (non-veg) in Mesa, Phoenix AZ , is the only example of a state-recognized cooperatively owned mobile home park-cum-retirement center in the US, apparently. It was started more than a decade ago by Larry Vipond and a group he brought together, each person putting down $20K for a share that gives them a site on the property. The monthly rent started at $50 and after 12-14 years it has now finally gone up to about $70. Congrats to Eastgate! 

INTENTIONAL  COMMUNITY  WEBSITES