Our Vision of Community
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We desire to live in a close-knit, supportive community, surrounded by good neighbors. We will support each other physically, emotionally, and spiritually as we age. We are a group with great and diverse talents and wish to share these gifts with each other.
We have in common a shared value of spirituality and appreciation of nature. We recognize that we need something bigger than ourselves for our community to thrive. We value diversity and will support one another in our spiritual practices.
We seek community, yet we recognize the need to balance community with privacy. We encourage and respect individuality. We seek diversity of all kinds in our community. We encourage our members to have a life outside our neighborhood—to reach out to friends, family, and the broader community. Valverde Commons is designed to meet the needs of mature adults. However, we value family and welcome visits by young friends, children and grandchildren.
We recognize that decision-making is an important, complicated, and ongoing task for an intentional community. We will establish clear, efficient, and sufficient rules and procedures so that our decisions are made fairly, yet without becoming an onerous burden on the community. As a group, we will develop a process for dealing with conflict. We will be clear about what the community expects of its members.
We value respect for one another, tolerance, privacy, patience, love, diversity, individuality, compassion, openness, honesty, playfulness, harmony, a willingness to solve problems, and a willingness to help in times of need.
Aging
We commit ourselves to helping our neighbors as they age. We wish to stay in our individual homes and our community as long as possible. When one of us is ill or infirm, we will be surrounded by good neighbors. We will help with company, food, shopping, transportation, secretarial help, etc. As a community we will know about health care resources, home health care, and hospice options so that we can be of the greatest help to our neighbors and help to meet their needs.
While we commit ourselves to help our neighbors to remain in their homes as long as possible, we are not health professionals and do not commit ourselves to caring for those who need professional care. Some of us will need to leave our community to find professional nursing care. We all need to think about nursing care and have plans for ourselves for this eventuality.
Structures and Financial Commitments
Our community is comprised of 28 home sites. Our private lots are small, leaving the bulk of our land free for gardening and nature. Gardening and a beautiful environment are strong values of our community. Our community is designed to be walking friendly and keep cars on the periphery. While the layout of Valverde Commons fosters contact between neighbors, we all recognize the need for private spaces in our homes, both indoors and out.
We wish to have our individuality expressed in our dwellings. We want to build in an environmentally sustainable manner. We want to live in a beautiful environment. We want the architecture to facilitate a good investment and easy resale. And we want to make this project as affordable as possible in order to foster economic diversity in our community. Our building designs will seek to balance these factors.
We will have a common house for group dining, meeting, and entertainment. Our intention is to share our material resources when we can, so our common house will incorporate shared facilities such as a community kitchen. We will have a shared barn which will house communal garden tools, and a workshop. We will decide together which other items to share (laundry, clothes lines, tractor, piano, etc.). This will enable our individual residences to be smaller and simpler.
We will own our homes individually. The land, common house, and other common buildings will be held in common. Ownership will be structured so that individuals will easily be able to sell their homes if they wish to leave the community.
