Altair News Flash!

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Creating an ecovillage, a sustainable residential community for multiple households, is quite an undertaking! A lot of time and expense is involved. So we members of Altair know that the process has its ebbs and flows in terms of energy and activity. We are always appreciative of the enduring commitments and the financial supports that keep us going, especially during the occasional periods of low-tide! That was our experience in the wake of the pandemic. But we are happy to report that things are ramping up again now. On the agenda, for example, will be renewed marketing efforts, including online info sessions and farmers market tabling.

We’ve recently welcomed both a new investor couple (whose funding contribution will enable us to resume our SALDO application effort) and a new Trailblazer couple having special interests in horticulture and eldercare recreation. Soon we’ll be scheduling a Landscape Design Session with the Professionals and Members. In the meantime, we’ll be hosting a convivial social gathering at the Cidery in Kimberton on the evening of Friday, December 1st. Watch for the announcements!

Rendering of Altair’s future Community

Visiting EcoVillage Ithaca

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Almost 30 members of three different ecovillage projects (the EcoVillage New Jersey Meetup; Rachel Carson EcoVillage (Gibsonia, PA); and our own Altair EcoVillage project) visited the EcoVillage at Ithaca on August 19. The day included a get-to-know-one-another picnic on the patio of EVI's TREE Common House, then a two-hour tour of the premises, and afterward, for some, a group dinner at the world-famous Moosewood Restaurant. Our tour guide was Caitlin Cameron, the director of EVI’s educational wing (called “Thrive”). She was extremely well-versed in the many aspects of sustainability that pertain to ecovillage living.

The EcoVillage at Ithaca was built over the last thirty years on a 175-acre parcel of land just west of Ithaca, NY. It includes four(!) working farms and three cohousing neighborhoods. In regard to the latter, the First Residents Group (“FROG”) cluster of 30 homes was built in 1997. Thirty more units were added in 2006 via the Second Neighborhood Group (“SONG”). And then a third cluster (“TREE” - Third Residential Ecovillage Experience) of 40 units was completed in 2015. Our tour began there.

For the sake of affordability EVI included the construction of three stories of condo-type units above the TREE Common House. They determined that all homes in that neighborhood would be certified as LEED Platinum. Some even conform to the Passivhaus standard. All-electric and solar-endowed, they use 80-90% less energy for heating and hot water than typical homes in the northeast.

By the time the third neighborhood was built, EVI had become especially cognizant of accessibility issues. Every house in TREE has an entrance-way without steps and a layout with bedroom/bathroom amenities on the ground floor.

Our group next walked through the SONG neighborhood. The 30 homes there are built as duplexes to save energy and materials. They were individually customized and so they demonstrate a wide variety of sustainable building techniques. All homes are Energy Star-certified. The large Common House serves as an event venue for organizations from the wider Ithaca area. All three neighborhoods have access to their own community garden, but we noted that SONG’s is particularly impressive.

Our tour was diverted to the periphery of the FROG neighborhood because its central pathway was being paved on the day of our visit. The residents had originally wanted to leave the pathway natural (dirt and stones) but that turned out to hinder mobility, especially in wintertime. Such are the kinds of livability issues that every community has to consider and make decisions about.

FROG was the first cohousing project in the state of New York. All the houses are passive solar, with 14-foot-high windows on the south side and super-insulated walls. They are centrally powered by a 50KW array of solar panels just east of the neighborhood. A special FROG feature is the large community pond where residents swim, kayak, fish, and ice skate during the winter months. Some members of our group who stayed overnight took advantage of the FROG pond facilities on Sunday.

All three neighborhoods have playgrounds for children. With cars parked at the periphery, internal neighborhood areas are quiet and safe. All three of the Common Houses host community meals, concerts, and parties.

With lovely weather, common interests, and some inter-project bonding (and information sharing) many tour participants came away feeling encouraged about the future of the ecovillage movement and hopeful that EVI residents will soon have ecovillage cousins in Pennsylvania!

by Steve Welzer


MODELING A SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOOD

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Ecovillages are small, intentional communities where the residents have chosen to focus on reducing their environmental impact and developing more sustainable lifestyles. They engage in grassroots innovation and can play an important role in the transition to a more sustainable society. However, it is important to consider not just the innovations, but the way those innovations diffuse into, and are adopted by, the larger society. By modeling a high quality of life while achieving a low environmental impact, ecovillages can point the way toward sustainable consumption practices.

For Altair EcoVillage, we plan to address our environmental impact by addressing four areas of activity: home energy use, transportation energy use, food consumption, and waste disposal. At Altair, our homes will be powered with electricity generated by solar panels above the carports. Though we are required by the township ordnance to supply 50% of our own power, we plan to generate enough to meet all of our needs. For reducing transportation energy use, we are currently working on a car sharing program and already have a small fleet of electric vehicles that can be shared by the members. As far as food consumption, we will have a community garden and be able to host meals in our common house. However, as we have three local CSA’s (Community Supported Agricultural gardens) and a well-established whole foods store a block from our site, we can rest assured that any money spent will go to support our local commerce. We plan to establish a robust recycle and compost program. As an ecovillage, our objective is to find a way to maintain a high quality of life while decreasing consumption and environmental impact.

Another way Altair is hoping to be on the cutting edge of sustainable stewardship of the land is to fulfill the requirement in the township ordinance to achieve at least a silver rating from the US Green Building Council for the SITES initiative, which addresses practically all aspects of sustainability from responsible soil management practices to using local labor and materials to build the project. The members of Altair are committed to monitor and maintain the program for ten years.

The Passive House building certification, well beyond the township ordinance, is another measurable effort to reduce significantly the heating and cooling loads for the homes while using non-toxic materials, filtering outside air, and providing the healthiest homes possible. By purchasing factory-built panels, we reduce the construction timeline and assure quality control.

Sustainable consumption (defined as “patterns of consumption that satisfy basic needs”) is required to offer humans the freedom to develop their potential without compromising the Earth’s carrying capacity. Significant changes in consumption patterns are required. Intentional communities provide one resource for investigating alternative habits, ideals, and norms around consumption. These can provide useful strategies for addressing both the conceptual and technical issues.

By modeling a high quality of life while achieving a low environmental impact, Altair EcoVillage can point the way and be an example of sustainable consumption practices.

The Full Significance of “It Takes A Village” is Gradually Becoming Recognized

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It’s encouraging that discussions about care, health, support, and mutual aid are increasingly mentioning cohousing as relevant. In the June issue of The American Prospect, Rhoda Feng has an article titled: “It Takes a Village for Elder Care, Too.”

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-05-26-it-takes-a-village-elder-care-kenway-review

Many seniors are aware of recent research that suggests loneliness is at least as damaging to health as tobacco or obesity. As they look for ways to stay socially engaged, having shared living spaces and regular common meals just steps from their own home can make a huge difference. Distinctive features of cohousing make it easier for those with health challenges to stay in place longer. Nearby neighbors can easily pick up groceries. For medical or self-care support, neighbors can join together to hire a single caregiver.

Senior cohousing communities like Altair currently aren’t designed to provide intensive care. But if we create villages that demonstrate the collective advantages of aging-in-place, communitarian solutions might eventually become recognized as superior to, more humane than, assisted living and nursing home institutions. Meanwhile, cohousing residents feel fortunate to be able to benefit from the fostered interdependence and mutual aid that characterizes their modern re-implementation of the age-old supportive local village!

Common House Plans

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Collaborative design sessions were held in June and July 2022, resulting in general agreement about land-site and Common House designs. These have now provided auspicious (and inspiring!) visualization of what our future community will look like. Architects Tom Carnevale and Lauren Eustis facilitated both gatherings along with Land Planner Stephanie Wnuk and stormwater consultant Tom Halliwell, which were held at Beaver Farm a Camphill community near the Kimberton site. Results are shown below.

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Toward a Communitarian Paradigm of Life Satisfaction

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Someone on the national cohousing discussion list recently made the following interesting comment:

I think the trend toward “working at home” is especially important in cohousing since “home” is where everyone else is, too. I love having people at home more. Even though they are very careful to reserve their work time, the vibe is different. It reminds me of the 1950s when children came home for lunch, and there were enough people at home all day that the neighborhood was always alive.

The manifestation of feminism in modern society was, as with so much else, a less-than-satisfactory experience. There was some hope at the beginning of the second wave (circa 1970) that, as the lives of women were transformed toward a better balance between the social and the domestic, the lives of men would be transformed toward being less “the modern male way” (driven, workaholic, competitive, remote, away all the time, institution-oriented).

I grew up during the 1950s and do remember that I liked coming home for lunch. One day a friend would come with me to my house, another day I would go with a friend to their house. And I liked that someone was around when I got home from school.

Then, after 1975, instead of a healthy re-balancing for everyone, the mothers went off to work all day, and we started to hear about the “latch-key kids” phenomenon. The neighborhoods were hollowed out, devoid of life between 9 and 5. Things became even more institution-oriented (fathers out working for some institution of the system, mothers out working for some other institution of the system, children at school and then at daycare).

Our social-change movement had advocated a revamping of work life. Laboring for the institutions of the Leviathan in order to make a living is dreary. The disparaging of “1950s life” had justification when addressing the role rigidities that consigned women to domesticity. But the idea of ameliorating the consignments of both women and men never got very far. The “liberatory” response of having everyone go “the modern male way” was less than enlightened.

Right livelihood should mean working with and for our households, families, and communities directly. Stop the miserable commute to the remote office-within-an-institution. Yes, the economies of scale involved with that productive paradigm give us (some of us) a high material standard of living. But there would be more soul satisfaction in living more simply, downscaling our material aspirations, and working directly to sustain life together in our local communities. Then cohousing would be more than just a residential joy, it would be a whole-life collaboration. A side-benefit is that we could all be liberated from rigidities of role constraints and consignments. The adults could stick around; the children could participate. Working together to provide most of life’s necessities could enhance our sense of interdependence-in-place, could yield direct appreciation from familiar others, and could shift things toward a communitarian paradigm of life satisfaction.