Benefits of living in a community

Thanks and a big hug to my son Jonas.

Because of his engagement my mom was able to stay at home until she died. She needed not much help, but even dayly look at her, keeping her home running, a little bit shopping and human kindness was the way to let her stay at home, where she could enjoy her garden and the contact to her neighbours. I believe that this way of live prolonged her life for years.

This personal experience was one of the key-facts for me that let me start to think about the way to bring people together in such a project.

The other one was the opposite. A man died in his big house, where he lives alone. He was found dead after 6 months like a mummy, because nobody took notice of him.

So helping each other for me is one of the biggest advantages of community living. My imagination is a mix of different people of different ages to everyone’s advantage. The silver agers have the money, the younger ones have the power. Combined means it that we, the older ones, can invest more in such a project to support the younger ones to fulfil their dream of an alternative lifestyle by giving them the chance to rent an apartment for small money. On the other hand, we can establish a shuttle service and a shopping service driven by the youth team, further offering documentary service and digital help. And the children get grandparents to share and use for taking care of them .

Another big advantage is the sharing of resources. If we want to live sustainable and to leave our children a world that’s worth to live in, we have to reduce our footprint. My generation was the first who had detailed information by the club of Rome in the 1970th. But instead we changed something in our behaviour we made it even worse.

The „earth overshoot day“ , the day on which we consumed the resources of a whole year for keeping the planet alive, comes every year earlier. 2000 it was in October, this year in August. We live as we have a second earth.

The easiest way to conserve resources without sacrificing is to share them. A car is used 90 minutes a day in the middle, a lot of older people live alone in big houses after the children moved out. We consume massive space for rooms we rarely use like guestrooms or home offices, workshops or gym.

Let’s share all these things, let’s get more efficiency and reduce our ecological footprint.

The result is not sacrificing, maybe it’s a little reduction of personal living space, but a lot of common space. We will be able to realise in our plan one completely community home, with sauna, pool, offices, a bar and outdoor kitchen. If we lower the number of cars by sharing them, we can use the huge garage as a workshop, sharing all the tools, and so on.

A third but not unimportant fact is that community living can lower the costs. If we buy big, we become a better price. In a big community you find a lot of skills, so we are able to do a lot things ourselves. Even gardening or farming can reduce the costs.

And especially this object is searching for a second life!