Thriving Communes No Haven For Deadbeats

A friend passed along this interesting article from USA Today. Here's an excerpt--

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Back in the Summer of Love, communes were notorious havens for free love and illicit drugs where youthful hippies spurned materialism and got back to nature.

Forty years after the peak of that era, thousands of communes still flourish and inspire more experiments in communal living. These days, dope-smoking hippies are out. Environmentally conscious living for people of all ages is the new ethos. Even the label "communes" has fallen from favor. Call them "intentional communities."

Click the photo (by Eileen Blass, USA Today staff) to see the complete article.

Our intentional community fits the guidelines of "intentional community" described in the article. Except that we're not based on agriculture, and we own our own homes. You could also refer to us as a "compound", although we don't call ourselves that.

A compound is simply a collection of related buildings. Ours are gathered around a common building, within which we have occasional communal meals. Since "compound" has gathered some painful connotations, as has "commune", we usually call ourselves an "intentional community". Unlike an "accidental community" of people who happen to live near each other, our forty families have gathered and built homes here together with the intention of living as a community.