Posted in Blog on May 19th, 2013
HUD’s Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP) has a grant totaling $12.8 million and has extended the application deadline to July 15th. It calls for applicants to “contribute significant amounts of sweat equity.” Right now, for many of us, sweat is what we have in abundance. From HUD’s website: SHOP awards grant funds to eligible national [...]
Posted in Blog on May 9th, 2013
The fertile soil of the economic collapse and housing crisis compels us to consider ideas that, in fatter times, would have been unthinkable. The distinction between the type of sharing and the type of ownership is important. Shared arrangements could include PH/H – Professional Homes managed by Professional Homemakers. The household pivots around the Homemaker who [...]
Posted in Blog on May 8th, 2013
If you’ve had the privilege of living in a well managed home, you know that life is sweeter when dinner is on the table at 6:30 and you take leftovers for lunch. We rarely acknowledge the financial, psychological and time saving benefits of living in a well organized, gracious home. Indeed, it was one of [...]
Posted in Blog on May 7th, 2013
Dysfunctional families are one of our thorniest and most fundamental societal problems. If we stabilize the family culture, we have a shot at stabilizing society. Securing affordable housing is a major stress because today’s economics make new construction or rehabbing existing construction unaffordable for low and moderate-income people. Since affordable housing is not in the [...]
Posted in Blog on May 5th, 2013
We face many crises today — housing, food, nutrition, education, isolation, care for children, the elderly and health care. Improving our housing model could realistically ameliorate, to some extent, many of these challenges. Given the premise that our predominate housing model–single person / single family homes–may not be ideal for all demographic groups, New Community [...]
Posted in Blog on May 2nd, 2013
Using break through technology – face-to-face neighboring – communities can strengthen themselves from the ground up, a potential game changer. Community Mixers and Housing Mixers have the potential to empower communities to create housing, jobs, good food and strong communities from within. Every community is rich in resources – people who know how to fix things, nurses, early childhood experts, [...]
Posted in Blog on May 2nd, 2013
I am postponing the How Crazy is That? launch party because even after all this time, I’m still doing this mostly by myself in my spare time (none), with my spare cash (double none). I never intended my passion for community building as a solo effort and I welcome anyone who gets what this is about [...]
Posted in Blog on May 1st, 2013
We’re reeling from shocks to our sensibilities – Hurricane Sandy, Newtown, the sequester, Boston, West, Texas and floods. With hardly time to get up and dust ourselves off between hits, I am in a lot of wobbly company. When we get up, it is to weep for the environment, our poor and ill people and [...]
Posted in Blog on Apr 26th, 2013
If we can get housing right, many of our social, medical and educational ills will fall into place. Mixing together often, community-by-community, is a strategy to stabilize families and neighborhoods by catalyzing resources to secure appropriate housing, New Community Vision is launching a consulting cooperative to facilitate gatherings at which we educate about cooperatives by [...]
Posted in Blog on Apr 24th, 2013
Fueled by the astonishing income gap between the wealthy elite and the rest of us, millions of people are hopping off the consumption grid. Cooperatives offer a higher quality of life outside the grid. Hop on over to the co-op lifestyle. New Community Vision is officially launching itself as an education and entertainment enterprise to [...]