One reason there are not more intentional communities are zoning laws (true grammarians won't like that sentence--sorry). These were set up to control how land is used and they have their place much of the time. Who wants to live next to a cement factory, for example?But zoning laws make it illegal for groups of people to live together on a piece of land. This presumably “keeps property values high” and it ensures more tax money to the government. (Notice how the money system lies beneath every official rule.) Unfortunately, it means that friends and families who come together to form a community must do so illegally.
The above picture shows a typical situation where land is subdivided, and each parcel is owned by a different person. Each property must have a clearing within it for a house. Each property must have its own well drilled, its own driveway, and of course each property must be patrolled by a large, noisy carnivore to make sure no wild creatures come near (sorry you dog lovers). You probably couldn't dream up a more damaging system to the local ecology than this.
And on each property sits a single, solitary family.
They are called “homesteaders” and they are some of the busiest people around. This is because living out in the country is a ton of work. Nothing happens automatically like in a city, so hauling trash, chopping wood, clearing and patching roads, and endless trips to town are a basic fact of life. Then throw in all the things that people who move to the country want to do, like raising chickens and goats and horses, growing herbs and vegetables, raising honeybees, building outbuildings, etc., and you are occupied full time. To make matters worse, most homesteaders have to leave their property to earn money to support the whole affair. This means, basically, that the average homesteader is working two jobs: the money-earning one, and maintaining the homestead itself!
In a community, of course, these tasks would be shared among the members, which gives rise to the old saying, "Many hands make light work". The search to find a part of the country where zoning laws allow a community to form and grow unhindered led the Dancing Rabbit folks to move to the hinterlands of Missouri, which certainly wouldn't be my first choice of places to live.
We have found that sometimes homesteaders are agreeable to having cool people live on their land to help them with their property, providing work in exchange for rent. There are also farmers who need help with growing their crops, packing vegetables into boxes, and selling at markets. Sometimes a property owner needs help with a specific project, such as constructing a new building. Some of these situations are very short term, and sometimes long. I have to say that most of the people doing work trade are young, twenty-somethings, but often a family can be accommodated and sometimes a family is specifically advertised for. Here are some websites where such matches are made.
http://attrainternships.ncat.org/
http://www.wwoof.org/
http://www.organicvolunteers.com/
Zoning laws derive from a model of property ownership that was invented by the banking industry. Owning one's own land is a highly appealing idea, but this current system of one family per plot is an obstacle to a healthier way of living for humanity and the natural world. I see no hope that this system will change until industrial society slams into an ecological wall. I wish I saw a more hopeful path. In the meantime those of us who seek to form eco-communities will have to do so discretely in the hinterlands.
