RE: Intentional Communities: Are They Just for the Entitled?
This is the kind of thing I want too, some form of it anyway. I like having both individual and shared spaces.
To be honest I think it's probably contrary to entitlement. Entitlement looks more like hermetically sealed "family" houses in a sprawling suburbs, relying on a massive infrastructure for your ever need but giving very little back except tithes in the form of begrudgingly paid taxes and service fees. It's not that it's such a nice life to be in that tangled web, but more that the isolated lives allow people to not have to reckon with the environment, each other and the systems of which they are a part and depend on.
From a land use perspective I'm not sure if it's efficient though. There are a lot of factors and I'm not an expert. Probably depends a lot on what area of the world you are in and what the specific local challenges are. I know there are places around me barely used that a good sized homestead could be built on, if only the government would allow it.
I'm researching some of this stuff at the moment, leaning towards a rent-to-buy model perhaps. Followed you and looking forward to reading about your journey.
just live in VR until you have the support to be confident enough to become a workaholic and raise yourself the money to buy the property in the community you know you actually do need. We cant act like that whole buying a house thing isnt an option, theres a ton of options for cheap land and tiny homes that let you star out with something perfect for a year or two until you can save up for something bigger if you even care to at that point, you may wanna just build more tiny homes or extend it, i love the idea of just modular tiny homes that you can just stack up next to each other, with a big giant courtyard in the middle, OR a big space in the middle u can turn into your giant living room :) I imagine a nice indoor outdoor arrangement where you have soil in your living space with just towel like carpets over them or GRASS yeah grass, and towels over the dirt where grass isnt there , and plants, so grass if you can, carpets or no rugs if you cant get grass growing and then have lights on a timer on a cycle like indoor growing, and sprinklers, and have your indoor space have plants growing and just make everything a space for growing food indoor, imagine a child growing up in a house thats completely natural , all the creature comforts but grass on the ground instead of carpet and plants and trees growing indoor, fruit trees and other food plants groiwing indoor would just be so funny :D just pick tomatoes off the ground and eat :)
My biggest issue is getting into hundreds of thousands of Euro in debt. It's only a matter of time until the next financial crash and property prices in Ireland are already going up a lot, people are selling now because of it and I've read that people are already talking about the economy "overheating".
My preference would be to build something very small on a little land but in Ireland we have a lot of regulation about building, restrictions on where you can build to where you have a "housing need". You need to prove you need to live there, it helps if it was the area you grew up. Strange I know, I think the idea is to keep communities together and stop outsiders coming in and building lots of houses in cool areas, i.e. gentrification and other things like that.
So maybe buying a small rural house I think with some land or some land around it I could buy some day after I've established the strange "housing need"!
Also yea that would be crazy, a grass floor, I would love to do that for some part of a semi indoor semi outdoor part of a self build house. I have a kid and she'd love it I'm sure.