Category Archives: Intentional Communities

MBS Director Peggy Goertzen with summer intern Jordan Duerrstein. His focus will be Mennonite communal life, both theologically and practically.

Duerrstein, who has spent a week in Hillsboro, is a seminary student at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto.

He was selected from several strong candidates at various universities and colleges in U.S. and Canada as part of the five-week binational archival internship program during May and June.

Duerrstein came to Hillsboro after spending the first leg of the internship in Fresno, Calif., and he will head next to Abbotsford, B.C. The final stop in the internship is Winnipeg, Man.

We are delighted with this opportunity to showcase our unique Mennonite culture and history here through our record collections, artifacts and historic sites, said Peggy Goertzen, CMBS director.

Duerrsteins focus of study is Mennonite communal life, the theology that shaped it initially, the ways it has changed over time, and the prospects for forming intentional communities of faith today.

Prior to this internship, Duerrstein was a pastoral intern at FreeChurch in downtown Toronto, Ont. This year he will continue part-time seminary studies while serving as an associate pastor for The Meeting Place in Toronto.

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CMBS adds archival intern for summer - Hillsboro Free Press

Forbes

What The Future Of Caregiving Looks Like Forbes Where families are scattered or don't exist, we'll create intentional communities like the village movement to stay connected, he says. The thing about the Jetsons is they lived in a world with lots of cool technology, but what we liked was the family ...

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What The Future Of Caregiving Looks Like - Forbes

Decades ago, who would have thought that the graffiti-covered walls of deteriorated industrial buildings would catalyze the regeneration of an entire urban community? The 2016 ULI Global Award for Excellence presented to Miamis Wynwood Walls underscores how all types of art can become the foundation for economically successful placemaking.

A panel at ULI Washingtons recent Trends Conference explored strategies for strengthening communities identity and economic vitality with arts programming and local institutions. The session was moderated by Andy Shallal, proprietor of Busboys and Poets, a combined bookstore, restaurant, and performance venue with several locations in the Washington, D.C., area.

Shallal pointed out that creative placemaking can lead to gentrification, which, in turn, can cause displacement. Successfully regenerating urban neighborhoods can quickly become too expensive for the artists and longtime residents who created their communities allure to begin with. Displacement is an unintended consequence, but we keep doing it, he said.

Displacement does not always occur, argued Jim Brooks of City Solutions. It happens in strong markets, but not necessarily in weaker ones. It can be avoided by building in affordability over the long term, he noted, through land trusts, covenants, and similar measures. He also cited the success of a number of HOPE VI projects, which preserved affordable housing for many longtime residents. There is always pressure to build for the market rate, he warned.

Heidi Zimmers organization, ArtSpace, is devoted to creating, fostering, and preserving affordable space for artists and arts organizations. Financing usually combines state and federal low-income housing tax credits with a variety of other sources to maintain income-qualified housing and/or studio space for artists. The need for this type of housing became obvious in 2016 when a fire killed 36 people in an Oakland, California, warehouse that had been converted to an artists collective.

In 2006, the Washington, D.C., Department of Housing and Community Development asked ArtSpace to help expand and renovate Dance Place, which had helped generate a renaissance of development and investment in the citys Brookland neighborhood since 1986. ArtSpace and Dance Place formed a partnership to create a unique arts complex that is being built in two phases. Phase I, the mixed-use Brookland ArtSpace Lofts, is now in operation, while fundraising is underway for the complete renovation and expansion of Dance Places existing theater. Brooklands subsequently built $250 million mixed-use Monroe Street Market, using no public funding, includes 27 artists studios designated affordable in perpetuity.

Since its founding in 1979, ArtSpace has expanded to operate in 20 states across the United States. Its completed projects include nearly 2,000 live/work units and millions of square feet of nonresidential community and commercial space.

Juanita Hardy, ULIs senior visiting fellow for creative placemaking, believes that collaboration is the key to successful arts-focused community redevelopment with minimal displacement. ULIs Building Healthy Places Initiative, as part of a two-year creative placemaking project funded by the Kresge Foundation, has identified ten best practices in this area, summarized below and in her article in the March/April 2017 issue of Urban Land magazine:

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Curating Community through Intentional Placemaking - Urban Land

Local law enforcement agencies are teaming up to get more guns off the street. It will take place on June 15.

Catherine Park, WXIA 8:19 AM. EDT May 30, 2017

File photo of a gun.

ATLANTA - There will be a 'Gun Buy Back' event on June 15, 2017. What is a 'gun buy back' event? Well, I'm glad you asked.

In a collaborative effort between the Atlanta Police Department, the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, the Chaplaincy for the Sheriff's Office and church from the Atlanta community, an event is being held to buy guns from back from citizens.

Now, to be very clear, no one is confiscating your guns.No one is trying to prevent you from owning a gun. This is an effort to bring awareness to a crisis that is being faced by communities and to prevent more gun violence; accidental or intentional.

A community based group called Stopping Atlanta Violence Effectively, also known as S.A.V.E., is hoping to buy back guns from people in the community in order to protect children who may one day fall victim to gun violence.

S.A.V.E. has been raising funds for 18 months to sponsor the 'Gun Buy Back' event and hope to help get more guns off of Atlanta's streets.

Dr. R.L. White, a former president of the NAACP Atlanta Branch and a pastor for 47 years, organized and engineered the 'gun buy back' project in 2015 when he netted almost 1000 guns. His aim is to get guns out of the hands of people who have them and to help people realize that these weapons are a threat to children inside homes and are too easily procured on the streets.

He hopes the exchange of money for your guns will help motivate more people to join in on the event. $30,000 will be used to fund this event and will begin at 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 15, 2017.

2017 WXIA-TV

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Atlanta is holding a 'gun buy back' event: Here's what you need to ... - WXIA-TV

GREENWOOD, S.C. (BP) Members of Abney Memorial Baptist Church have prayerwalked every street within a five-mile radius of the church.

The South Carolina congregations two-year outreach has encompassed 2,000 homes and businesses, praying for the people living or working inside.

It has become a meaningful ministry that affects residents and church alike in Greenwood, S.C., pastor Brent Bennett said.

Prayerwalking has opened our eyes and helped our church catch the vision that there are lost people all around us, Bennett said. If we can catch the vision to go into their communities, then we can catch the vision to go to the ends of the earth.

Prayerwalking is an intentional form of prayer in which a person prays spontaneously or with pre-written prompts for people and places as they walk around them. The prayerwalking idea came to Bennett several years ago after Abney Memorial made the decision to relocate to the opposite side of Greenwood.

If our congregation was going to move from one side of town to the other, then we needed to reach people for Jesus in that community, Bennett said. First, we needed to get to know the people. One of the best ways to do that is to get into the community.

A core group of 10 church members met to pray about how to organize the prayerwalking. They looked at a map to identify their ministry area, then obtained physical addresses through public county records.

It was important to have a personal touch in its outreach, so the team sent handwritten notes to each address. The church began Sunday Prayer Nights, when members met to write the notes to be sent to the next months addressees.

The note communicated that a team from Abney Memorial would be walking by their home and praying for them. A stamped postcard was enclosed in the note, inviting homeowners to respond to the church with specific prayer requests. When a homeowner included a phone number, the church followed up with a call as well.

We initially wrote 768 letters, with about a dozen church members addressing them, Bennett said. By June 2017, we will have prayerwalked everywhere in the community every house, every street.

ALSO READ: LifeWay to offer free breakfast, workshops at SBC meeting

Methodical planning went into the details of the walk routes. The team divided the northwest area of Greenwood into four zones, with smaller sections within each zone, drawing two-mile routes for each prayerwalking group.

Church members meet one Sunday every month for the prayerwalks and divide into groups of four to eight, depending on the routes set for that day.

Church member Lena Sprouse said the ministry has brought all generations of the congregation together, providing a way for everyone to participate.

We have had little children place stamps on the envelopes, she said. Older adults, who may not write well, place the letters in the envelopes, and children and youth have handwritten some letters.

Prayerwalking also has stirred the hearts of Abney Memorial members for missions. For the first time in the churchs history, it has formed local, state, national and international missions partnerships, Bennett said.

God is working through sending our people out, and the prayerwalks were the first step in doing that, he said.

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Prayerwalking lifts church's heart for community - The Pathway

When I begin to notice an idea recurring in different contexts, it's an indication I should pay attention. Currently that idea is "generativity," a term attributed to Erik Erikson who used it in 1950 to describe concern and care for the next generation, the desire to provide for and gift the future.

Recently I read Barbara Bradley Hagertys book, Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife. Now that I've reached the chronological stage of generativity (40-65 years old according to Erikson) I understood Barbara viscerally as she addressed the need for generativity as part of a healthy midlife journey.

A few weeks ago I met the idea again when Benedictine Sr. Edith Bogue addressed a gathering of sisters and oblates at our monastery, on the topic of carrying monastic life to new generations. It can't be done with tweaks, she told us. We must be intentional.

Life is one choice after another even when we aren't conscious of intentionally choosing. And we can't halfway choose, halfway make a decision it is yes or no. If we ignore the options rather than make a conscious choice, we are in effect deciding by forfeit. Which is a choice.

Every action of every day, starting with getting out of bed in the morning, is a choice. And we don't know where those choices will lead. Outside of the very minute I am writing these words, I dont know with certainty what the future will be. Not even the next 10 minutes.

But even so, we want to provide direction for the future. When we're younger it's our own future we think about. But as we get older, its the future that matters: the future of those who come after us, of the works we have created, of our communities, the human community and the earth. Granted there's some ego involvement, but in the end we know that at the moment of death none of it will be ours any longer. We can come to that moment in peace if we believe we have done our best to leave the best to those who will follow us.

For those of us experiencing midlife in religious life right now it is difficult to experience generativity. We were children or just coming of age during the heady days of Vatican II renewal. We have lived the fruits of that period, but havent ourselves experienced the rush of transformation and rebirth. Our lives have been about tending what was given us.

Edith, a sociologist and currently vocation and oblate director for the Benedictine Sisters of Duluth, Minnesota, addressed what I have been experiencing as "stuckness," a focus on maintaining good works but not renewing life. In Eriksons eight developmental stages (of which generativity is the seventh) each stage has an opposite; the opposite of generativity is stagnation. "Plateau" is the word Edith used, as she put a graph of an organizational life cycle on the screen. She suggested we sloped up for years and then plateaued after Vatican II. Now after 50 years of being stuck at the top of the cycle, we're at a point of critical juncture: either follow the traditional downslope to organizational death or choose to transform ourselves and begin a new upward slope.

I fear some communities are already too far down the slope, their critical juncture happened 15 or 20 years ago and they tweaked their way along rather than making intentional choices for ongoing transformation as the world careened and changed around them.

But for those now teetering on the brink of the downslope those that still have life and energy and passion to ask the hard questions and make the choice for transformation the time is now. What are the generative questions to ask now, the generative actions we must take now?

Complacency and conformity are among our biggest threats. We need urgently to be nonconformists. We dont need new vocation campaigns or fundraising strategies or even new activism. With gut-level courage we need to look at ourselves from the inside out, not basing decisions on old standards but pushing forward with a new heart and a new vision, remembering that the heart of a religious vocation is total life dedication to seeking God. Human beings are spiritual beings; many if not most seek God in some way. But for vowed religious, that is the core and center of our being. That is our vocation. How we live out that seeking, how we respond in our ministries, communal witness, outreach, and call for peace and justice, will change over time. The how will change, the why will not.

Many communities and leadership organizations are working hard under what Edith called "the weight of present tasks": upkeep of properties, needs of aging members, administration of ministries, and financial concerns. There is also "the weight of our history": old assumptions and memories that limit our attention to the call to transformation or renewal.

I believe our real and immediate need is to create as many think tanks or brain trusts as we have committees and leadership teams dealing with the "weight of present tasks." (Braintrust, Pixar Animation Studios method for enabling creativity is candid feedback and the iterative processreworking, reworking, and reworking again, according to its president, Ed Catmull.) How intentionally do we look at the things we do each day our rituals, work, living arrangements, social gatherings, governance and financial decisions? Do we simply keep on doing the same things we did yesterday or ten years ago, tweaking this or that as we have fewer people capable of doing, organizing or cleaning up after it?

Intentionally choosing transformation is not failure and does not diminish what has been. And success is not always a good thing. We're doing all the right kind of planning for "success" in the process of diminishment studying our ministries, banking up our retirement funds, planning mergers, and selling properties. But that is not the kind of success I want. I want to be successful at renewing ourselves, at creatively reinventing how we seek God here and now. For the sake of the future.

When a young woman says to me that she feels the same existential loneliness that brought me to seek God in community, and another tells me that she longs to find that elusive something more that she already knows she is different than many of her peers because of her quest I know that there are still vocations to religious life. What do those vocations look like now? How do we live them now in ways that these women can embrace?

My mother experienced generativity through her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I hope to experience it in helping to make our wisdom traditions accessible to todays women, todays seekers. In religious life today we hold a treasure that the future needs. We can seed the future just as my mother did. But just as my mother never expected the lives of her granddaughters to look like hers, we can't expect our future lives to look the same as they do now. Our call to generativity is transformation.

[Linda Romey is a Benedictine Sister of Erie, Pennsylvania, and is the community's web developer/designer. She does marketing for them, Monasteries of the Heart and Benetvision. Prior to entering the Erie Benedictines, she worked seven years in Colombia. She is a former marketing and advertising manager for the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company.]

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On generativity - Global Sisters Report (blog)

An intentional community is a planned residential community designed from the start to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They typically share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, communes, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, ashrams, and housing cooperatives. New members of an intentional community are generally selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned collectively by the community).

The purposes of intentional communities vary in different communities. They may include sharing resources, creating family-oriented neighborhoods, and living ecologically sustainable lifestyles, such as in ecovillages.

Some communities are secular; others have a spiritual basis. One common practice, particularly in spiritual communities, is communal meals. Typically, there is a focus on egalitarian values. Other themes are voluntary simplicity, interpersonal growth, and self-sufficiency.

Some communities provide services to disadvantaged populations, for example, war refugees, the homeless, or people with developmental disabilities. Some communities operate learning or health centers. Other communities, such as Castanea of Nashville, Tennessee, offer a safe neighborhood for those exiting rehab programs to live in. Some communities also act as a mixed-income neighborhood, so as to alleviate the damages of one demographic assigned to one area. Many intentional communities attempt to alleviate social injustices that are being practiced within the area of residence. Some intentional communities are also micronations, such as Freetown Christiania.[citation needed]

Many communities have different types or levels of membership. Typically, intentional communities have a selection process which starts with someone interested in the community coming for a visit. Often prospective community members are interviewed by a selection committee of the community or in some cases by everyone in the community. Many communities have a "provisional membership" period. After a visitor has been accepted, a new member is "provisional" until they have stayed for some period (often six months or a year) and then the community re-evaluates their membership. Generally, after the provisional member has been accepted, they become a full member. In many communities, the voting privileges or community benefits for provisional members are less than those for full members.

Christian intentional communities are usually composed of those wanting to emulate the practices of the earliest believers. Using the biblical book of Acts (and, often, the Sermon on the Mount) as a model, members of these communities strive for a practical working out of their individual faith in a corporate context. These Christian intentional communities try to live out the teachings of the New Testament and practice lives of compassion and hospitality.[1] Communities such as the Simple Way, the Bruderhof[2] and Rutba House would fall into this category.

A survey in the 1995 edition of the Communities Directory, published by Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), reported that 54 percent of the communities choosing to list themselves were rural, 28 percent were urban, 10 percent had both rural and urban sites, and 8 percent did not specify.

The most common form of governance in intentional communities is democratic (64 percent), with decisions made by some form of consensus decision-making or voting. A hierarchical or authoritarian structure governs 9 percent of communities, 11 percent are a combination of democratic and hierarchical structure, and 16 percent do not specify.[3] Many communities which were initially led by an individual or small group have changed in recent years to a more democratic form of governance.

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Intentional community - Wikipedia

An anniversary celebration is planned for June 10 at East Hill Farm.

MIDDLESEX The Rochester Folk Art Guild attains a milestone accomplishment this year, as the group celebrates 50 years as a vibrant and creative crafts community.

The first seven members to make the move to Middlesex put down roots on East Hill, in 1967. Since that time, hundreds of people have spent time at East Hill Farm, helping it grow and develop into one of the oldest intentional communities in the country.

To mark this year's milestone, members extend a welcome to all in the local communities to share in a day of celebration, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 10. Tours of the studios and East Hill Gallery are planned.

The Guilds Ensemble Resonance will perform chamber music of Mozart, Nino Rota and Taylor-Coleridgefor flute, bassoon, and piano at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Free light refreshments will be available.

The Folk Art Guild has built a reputation for pottery, woodworking, weaving and other handcrafts. Beautiful and functional objects from these studios have found their way around the world, over the years that these studios have been in continuous operation.

Eighteen independent structures have been built over the years, and the 1850s farmhouse has been pushed out and renovated in three directions.

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Rochester Folk Art Guild to mark 50 years in Middlesex - Greece Post

An anniversary celebration is planned for June 10 at East Hill Farm.

MIDDLESEX The Rochester Folk Art Guild attains a milestone accomplishment this year, as the group celebrates 50 years as a vibrant and creative crafts community.

The first seven members to make the move to Middlesex put down roots on East Hill, in 1967. Since that time, hundreds of people have spent time at East Hill Farm, helping it grow and develop into one of the oldest intentional communities in the country.

To mark this year's milestone, members extend a welcome to all in the local communities to share in a day of celebration, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 10. Tours of the studios and East Hill Gallery are planned.

The Guilds Ensemble Resonance will perform chamber music of Mozart, Nino Rota and Taylor-Coleridgefor flute, bassoon, and piano at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Free light refreshments will be available.

The Folk Art Guild has built a reputation for pottery, woodworking, weaving and other handcrafts. Beautiful and functional objects from these studios have found their way around the world, over the years that these studios have been in continuous operation.

Eighteen independent structures have been built over the years, and the 1850s farmhouse has been pushed out and renovated in three directions.

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Rochester Folk Art Guild to mark 50 years in Middlesex - News ... - Penfield Post

Some people dream of sailing around the world for a year, or quitting their job to live in the mountains and write a great novel. My personal fantasy is to start my own commune. Ill get a group of friends together to buy a decommissioned elementary school. Well cook together in the big industrial kitchen, turn the schoolyard into a community garden, convert the classrooms into bed-and-bath suites. The chance to pool our resources, create a community, and upend the nuclear-family model of living sounds intensely appealing to me. And the idea of eating dinner with a dynamic tangle of friends and loved ones every night doesnt hurt, either.

So Ive watched with interest as Silicon Valley-backed startups look for ways to update communal living for the 21st century. On the surface, so-called co-living companies, including WeLive, Common, Node, Krash, and Pure House may seem like the millennial version of hippie-founded intentional communities. But the actual structure and premise of these experiments in high-density living are actually at philosophical odds with their counter-cultural roots. And that makes me wonder whether they can truly deliver on the happiness they promise to prospective tenants.

Co-living spaces cater to a specific type of person: upwardly mobile, single young professionals seeking maximum convenience and flexibility in their living situations. From their pre-furnished apartments to the stocked kitchen and shampoo dispensers, co-living spaces are designed to liberate tenants from quotidian concerns.

Rent is priceyoften upwards of $2,000 a month to live with something like 10 other people. But in exchange, tenants get to eschew the beta version of young adulthood that has traditionally involved the footwork of finding a crappy apartment, acceptable roommates, and an enjoyable social life. In most, luxe furnishings even eschew the tradition of finding a dresser on the street, or buying a bed at Ikea. Like so many other companies funded by venture capital, co-living aims to help privileged people bypass these challenging but ultimately achievable tasks, supplying toilet paper and dish soap, cleaning services, and social calendars stacked with movie nights and yoga classes.

Much of the language these start-ups use to describe themselves is ripe for parody. Krash calls itself a particle accelerator for people. A company called Ollie is developing North Americas largest co-living development in Long Island City, Queens, and has created an app called Bedvetter to match roommates. Yes, they named it that on purpose.

But to hear co-living acolytes tell it, this set-up is a recipe for happinesseven a potential solution the epidemic of loneliness said to be sweeping the US. Weve been driven by a desire to help build meaningful relationships and bring a little more love and belonging to the world, Tom Currier, the CEO of co-living company Campus, wrote to his customersin the same letter announcing that the company was about to fold.

Adam Neumann, of the co-founder and CEO of WeWork, which owns WeLive, told the New Yorker that his years living on a kibbutz as a teenager in Israel had convinced him that people are meant to live in groups. The fulfillment I felt being part of a community was so real, gave me so much strength to deal with my own personal challenges, that its always been ingrained in me that being together is better than being alone, he said. He added that WeLive aims to provide residents with the option of privacybut if they dont want to, they will never be alone in their life!

Theres no doubt that its annoying to find an apartment in a tight housing market, much as its annoying to deal with laundry or fill up on gas. And co-living spaces are surely a boon for young people who might otherwise feel isolated in a big new city. But ultimately, co-living spaces are built to reinforce the self-centered, disconnected status quo of the digital era. In erasing inconvenience and any possibility of friction or need for compromise, they perpetuate the idea that the self comes before everyone else. And examining questions like why the housing market is so expensive, or where elderly or low-income people might turn for similar services, is beyond the scope of the problems that co-living spaces are working to solve.

Traditional intentional communities, meanwhile, aim to address social problems head-on. On a micro level, there are the daily chores and responsibilities that force people to figure out how to live cooperatively: washing the dishes together, taking turns cleaning the bathrooms, and voting about whether to raise chickens or enforce quiet hours after 10 pm.

The most collectivist intentional communities, in which land, labor and all responsibilities are shouldered equally by members in an intensely cooperative, often agrarian setting, prefer to call themselves egalitarian communities. Kat Kinkade, one of the founders of Twin Oaks in Virginia, the oldest egalitarian community in the US, writes in her book, Is It Utopia Yet?, Central to my own happiness was my conviction that there was no task on earth more important, or certainly more interesting, than the building of an egalitarian community.

Although few self-identified intentional communities are as rigorous in their structure as Twin Oaks, many share a sense of mission explicitly seeking to address socioeconomic and racial injustice, financial barriers and social alienation embedded in the American housing market. Individual communities may also grow out of a shared commitment to a given political causeanarchists working together to participate as little as possible in the mainstream economy, or eco-villages in which single-family homes share a piece of land and a commitment to green living. In other words, theyre doing a lot more intellectual and social heavy lifting than your typical co-living start-up.

That sense of purpose is essential to building a happier life. Bjrn Grinde is a Norwegian evolutionary biologist who did a study of members of intentional communities of all kinds, most of whom were located in North America, in partnership with the Fellowship for Intentional Communities. He found that people who lived in those communities reported far higher levels of happiness than their peers, especially in North America. In a phone call from his office at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health in Oslo, he explained that despite the American obsession with individuality and independence, the most consistent factor for predicting happiness is social connectivity. Individual freedom has some narcotic aspects, Grinde said. But its not necessarily the best option in the long run for the average person.

This sentiment is echoed by people I know whove gone in for communal living. Lara Henderson, an artist and bookmaker I met through my sister, told me that moving into AS220, an artists collective in Providence, Rhode Island, with shared living and studio spaces, has been life-changing for herboth personally and professionally. In addition to access to tools and equipment, like a printshop, living among other working artists has provided her with emotional and professional support, in an avocation that is both competitive and financially challenging.

My old friend George Popham told me about his experience starting a communal house with a mix of couples and singles, ranging in ages from 30 to 50, just outside of Boston. I turned 50 this year and Im seeing a lot of my peers completely atomize, he said. Theyre isolated in their nuclear family, and they have no friends If youre over 40, your prospects for having community, the way our society works, is just absolutely nil. The house, which disbanded after two years when the landlord did not renew the lease, wasnt organized around a specific philosophy. But Popham said the custom of cooking dinner together every night became the beating heart of the enterprise.

In our conversation, Grinde was quick to note that co-living spaces are likely more conducive to happiness than living alone, since they do provide a social connection. As a scientist, however, he declined to speculate about whether co-living might provide the other major happiness maker his research has identifiedfeeling that your life has meaning.

Grindes theory is that we evolved to value a sense of purpose because it motivates us to work hard and make long-term investments. A feeling of satisfaction after a good days work might once have encouraged a hunter-gatherer to keep picking berries, even beyond her tribes needs for the day. Now it gets mapped onto activities like work, volunteering, and creative expression.

Intentional communities are designed to make people feel that theyre contributing to a greater causewhether by helping to prepare communal meals, sharing spaces that support artists, or building a treehouse for kids on a shared piece of land. These tasks arent just points of social connection; theyre crucial to creating an ethos that deeply respects work, whether its paid or not.

Co-living, on the other hand, aims to free residents from the everyday drudgery of chores, much in the way Soylent attempts to free programmers from the terrible burden of eating. But there is something to be said in favor of taking responsibility for the upkeep of the space where you live. As poet and farmer Wendell Berry wrote in the 1988 essay Economy and Pleasure, The nearly intolerable irony in our dissatisfaction is that we have removed pleasure from our work in order to remove drudgery from our lives.

The individualistic mindset of co-living spaces is evident in their near-exclusive focus on relatively young, single people. For many families, finding affordable housing and childcare is a legitimate crisis. So why are there so many different ways for mobile tech workers to enjoy networking and well-designed furniturebut not a single start-up, as yet, trying to replicate the semi-communal parenting experience outlined in one much-shared New York Times story?

Seeking answers, I reached out to Common founder Brad Hargreaves, who has a toddler of his own. Unlike a start-up like Krash, which basically monetizes the infamous Silicon Valley convention of short-term crash pads known as hacker houses, Common actively works to maintain long-term tenants and build a strong community within each house.

Hargreaves was quick to agree that finding housing is even more challenging for families than for singles or couples. I think theres a huge need for some of the same shared amenities and space for families with young kids, he said. Its something were very interested in and I hope we can tackle in the coming years.

He added that Common has already made changes to its model since launching in the fall of 2015, in an effort to foster a deeper sense of community. Theyve stopped offering one-month leases, and now offer discounts on 12-month leases to encourage longer-term tenants. Each house has a leader who receives a discount on rent and helps facilitate events and moderate potential conflicts.

Over the course of my conversation with Hargreaves, I became less skeptical of co-living. Thats because, when he talks about the main problem that Common is trying to solve, he doesnt talk about personal happiness or tight-knit community. Instead, he focuses on the practical attempt to address New York Citys housing crunch. I think its fundamentally about solving a housing problem and specifically a really underserved segment of the housing market, which are people who live with roommates, he said.

In New York City, most apartments are set up for families or couples, leaving roommates to construct their own habitats with cheap temporary walls and bedrooms with no windows or closets. I dont think thats a great way to live, Hargreaves said. Co-living spaces like Common are working with developers to design spaces specifically set up for roommatesa living situation thats not going away anytime soon.

Given how intimidating and stressful the process of finding an apartment in a new city can be, I can see why Common and other co-living spaces have so much appeal. I might well apply to them myself, if I was making a big move to a new place. But its worth keeping in mind that, as with so many Silicon Valley endeavors, co-living is mostly about conveniencenot social revolution.

Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Co-living startups are selling millennials the hippie dreamminus the hard work and revolution - Quartz