A countercultural way to live: An inside look at a modern ‘intentional community’

Peterborough, N.H. — Arriving at the Nubanusit neighborhood is to step into a secluded haven hidden within the woods of rural New Hampshire. Wildflowers bloom around cedar-shingled homes topped with solar panels. There are no cars in sight, and life moves at a gentle pace, perfumed by the scents of cut grass and sugar maples. On a green lawn, children are running a mint iced tea stand; a resident strolls along a pathway between the homes, mug in hand; and another person emerges from a home to hand a Popsicle mold to a neighbor.

At the Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm — or “Nubi” as residents call it — life is designed to unfold this way. In 2007, a group of developers passionate about sustainable living and community-based agriculture set out to turn 113 acres in Peterborough, New Hampshire, into an eco-friendly neighborhood. Today, 29 households make up this cohousing community, a modern “co-living” model where residents own their homes and work regular jobs, but share and collectively care for the common spaces.

The 16 homes are clustered together and are interconnected by pedestrian pathways. The cars must be parked in a communal carport before entering the neighborhood. While everyone has their own kitchen, there are frequent potlucks and celebrations in the Common House. Everything feels carefully designed to instill a sense of connection and neighborliness into the daily life inside the community.

“I do think it’s countercultural, because we grew up in an individualistic country,” said Angela Pape, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years with her husband and three children. “So to have a bunch of people who grew up in an individualistic culture come together — you sometimes have to put your personal priority aside.”

It’s not always a blissful utopia, Pape and other residents told me during a recent visit. Over the years, community members have disagreed over the logistics of running the farm, where to direct their monthly dues, and most recently, whether to take down an ailing tree in the public area. Any decision that affects the community requires the group to reach consensus.

“To be successful at cohousing, you have to be able to forgive and try your best to let go of certain things,” Pape said. “Because at times, you’re bound to disagree with somebody.”

Cohousing in the U.S.

The concept of cohousing originated in Denmark in the late 1960s as a response to the desire for more community-oriented living arrangements. Danish architect Jan Gudmand-H?yer and others began envisioning housing that balanced the privacy of individual homes with the benefits of shared spaces and communal activities. This led to the creation of the first modern cohousing communities. While “intentional community” is a broad term for groups living together based on shared values, a cohousing community specifically involves private homes with shared communal spaces and a focus on fostering close-knit relationships.

By the late 1980s, cohousing had reached the United States and in 1991, the first American cohousing community, Muir Commons, was established in Davis, California. Since then, the model has expanded across the country — there are about 180 cohousing communities across the United States, including the Wasatch Commons community in Salt Lake City, which comprises 26 clustered townhouses, both owned and rented by residents.

Another one in Utah is under way, according to a listing on the Cohousing Association of the United States website; the organizers are looking for land and people to join. More communities are forming in Canada, England, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Interest in cohousing neighborhoods continues to grow from all ages, according to Kathryn McCamant, co-designer of the first U.S. cohousing community in California and president of CoHousing Solutions. She’s currently working with 17 different communities — urban and agrivillages, young families and retirees — in all phases of forming these communities.

“We clearly need options for creating community in our day-to-day lives as levels of loneliness continue to increase at all age ranges,” McCamant said in an email. “If you can meet neighbors a stroller ride away, rather than having to get you and the kid (and the dog?) in a car to get together, just that lessens the family stress and creates more satisfying connection.”

A recent report called Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life highlighted racial and educational disparities when it comes to feeling connected in your community. For instance, Black Americans without college degrees are “significantly more disconnected than every other group in American life,” according to the report.

While Americans still talk to neighbors they may not know well, they do so infrequently, the researchers found. While around 47% of the 6,500 Americans that participated in the study reported speaking to their neighbors at least a few times a year, half of the participants “seldom” or “never” talk to people in their community they don’t know well, according to the report. For Americans who take walks in their neighborhoods, the chances of encounters and conversations with their neighbors are higher.

“People have always lived in some form of communities; we need to remake how we do that locally, tied to proximity,” McCamant said. “Cohousing has shown one way we can do that.”

“The farm is our anchor”

Nancy Roberts, who is 92, was one of the first members of the Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm community, recalls the growing pains of learning to live together in this way. “It was hard because we were doing everything from scratch,” said Roberts, who spent time living on a boat in the Mediterranean, then in Greece and in France for 20 years prior to the move to Peterborough. What drew her to the Nubanusit community, was the way that the neighborhood reminded her of the small town in Ohio where she grew up.

The work of running the community and the farm is something between running a giant condo association and a small town. There are bylaws and a steering committee that hosts monthly plenary meetings. The community’s website lists Nubanusit’s core values, which include interdependence, environmental stewardship, respect and integrity. An 80-page handbook outlines directions for every aspect of communal living: how to keep the Common House clean, the workshare agreement and decision-making guidelines. On the latter point, it says: “Using consensus decision making is a commitment to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.”

Everyone is asked to join a team, such as events and activities, equipment or finance. “It’s really the sense of do what you can, contribute what you can,” said Melissa Maurer, who moved to Nubanusit in 2009 from another cohousing community in Michigan, and currently serves as the lead for the membership team.

Sometimes ideas of what’s best for the community diverge. Most recently, the disagreements revolved around a 200-year-old sugar maple tree in one of the public areas. The dying tree should be taken down for safety reasons, one group believed, while others wanted to save the tree. The decision was delegated to one of the teams, which made the decision to take down the tree. “As humans sharing responsibility for this big place, you know situations come up and we need to find solutions together,” said Maurer.

When I visited the community, the residents were gearing up for a “tomato dinner,” where everyone would contribute a dish made from tomatoes from the five-acre farm.

The residents work with farmers who take care of the farm under a land-use agreement, and they contribute monthly association dues that cover equipment maintenance and other shared expenses like heat and hot water, plowing, and building and grounds. (The dues are based on the square footage of each unit and range from about $250 to $650 for the largest 2656-square-feet unit.) They have bought a tractor and greenhouses, and many members purchase shares in the CSA (community supported agriculture). Residents help raise chickens and other animals for meat production.

Susan Fallon, another resident, has wondered about what anchors the community, noting that religion has historically been a unifying factor for many intentional communities. “I’m wondering if the farm is our anchor,” said Fallon, whose mother’s lineage traces back to Philo Johnson, an early member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Because I’m not sure what our anchor is sometimes.”

It’s through the sometimes hard conversations over stewardship that the community finds a way forward, according to Peter Orbeton. “It’s the distinction between caring and caregiving,” said Orbeton, who’s lived in the community for 15 years. “And what that means is participating in those conversations.”

It takes a village

It’s families with children who seem to benefit from Nubanusit’s neighborliness the most.

While living in an urban neighborhood in Boston, Pape said she spent a lot of time scheduling playdates for her kids. She’d text a parent to ask for a playdate to hear back that “maybe once in three months they’d have an opening on Saturday at 2 o’clock,” she told me. Here, no logistical choreography is necessary. That morning, Pape’s 4-year-old son woke up and went over to a neighbor’s house to play.

With another mom, Pape went on a walk to talk about their differences in parenting approaches in order to help their kids get along. “There was a commitment to: how can our households and our children have a functioning family relationship?” Pape said.

The community also engenders adult friendships. Being on the “equipment” team has helped Pape’s husband make male friends, something she said he’d been missing for years. “If we lived in some isolated suburban neighborhood, he wouldn’t have those two hours once a month that he talks to the men about what’s going on in his life,” she said.

And older residents view living around children as a perk. When Jean Foster was working in her garden recently, a 4-year-old who was walking by asked Foster if he could help. So she invited him to pick cherry tomatoes and taught him to find cucumbers hiding under the leaves. “I think being around young people keeps you younger,” Foster said. Another resident said: “I don’t have any hope of having my own grandchildren, but here I can share my love of horses with some of the kids and with others, just be a supportive ‘grandma.’”

Aging at home is something that Foster has thought about while deciding on moving to the community from her prior residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She now lives in a first-floor unit without stairs; the doors are wide enough for a wheelchair if needed.

For Roberts, who said she will soon stop driving due to age, it’s reassuring to know that younger volunteers and neighbors can drive her and help with physical tasks. “I don’t have to go someplace else to find the driver,” she said. For her, the cohousing model offers just the right mix of connectivity and privacy: If Roberts feels social, she sits on her front porch watching kids running around; if she’s looking for time alone — she settles in the back, close to the river.

In the strident political situation today, Maurer said, she hopes to create more joy wherever she lives: “As we live together, discuss things, solve problems, I hope we could bring more joyfulness into the equation.”