What comes to mind when you hear the phrase 'community living'? For most people, myself included, the image that phrase conjures up centers on a group of people, generally with green/hippy leanings, living together in a flat. Living with other people was fine, sometimes even fantastic, while I was a student but now that I'm married I don't think I could live in the same house as anyone other than immediate family again. Last night I watched a tv programme that showed me a different image of community living, one that I liked and could live in quite happily one day.
The show was Grand Designs (in case you didn't pick it from the title of this entry). Every week they follow someone building a grand (large, fancy, or just rather unique) house. This week, however, it was not just one house, but 10 houses in a row that were being built.
Ten families who were all in need of a house for a variety of reasons decided to join together. With the help of what I think is the British equivalent of Housing NZ who bought the land, paid for the build and provided some expert assistance, these 10 families built their own, and each others, houses. As part of the deal each family had to put in 30hours a week on the project and apart from a very small amount of expert help, they had to build all the houses themselves in return for reduced rent once the houses were finished. The houses were reasonably small and simple because they were designed to be built by people with no building experience but they turned out great and have been home for these families for over a decade now.
Because they were all so involved in the building process all the adults and kids got to know each other well and once finished they got to live next door to people who had become close friends. The kids have all grown up together. They have their own community garden with fruit and veges and a fire pit to gather around.
The idea of building a house is becoming more and more attractive to me and doing it with a group of other people would be fun and a good way to get to know people more and share skills (and stress). We wouldn't have to build very similar houses as they did in the tv show, and we wouldn't have to do so much of the work ourselves but we could.
I also like the idea of living so close to friends, allowing plenty of socialising and support between both adults and kids. I could even enjoy having a small communal plot of land to grow stuff in, after all one lemon tree always gives more lemons than one family can use.
So while community living in the sense of living in the same house as others may not be for me, being part of a community of households may be.
