Tiny Neighborhoods
It’s Monday, 5pm. You’re arriving home from work. A few kids are playing soccer in the courtyard and a few others are playing ping pong. You can smell the chili Abigail and Ben are cooking in the common house. You and Marcus made BBQ chicken last month, and everyone loved it. Right at 6, the dinner bell goes off, and a dozen families come to the common house to eat. After dinner, most people go back to their homes to get ready for the next day, but a few stick around to watch Monday Night Football together. This is life in a Tiny Neighborhood.
For years I lived three houses down from Tony, a semi-retired police officer who loved his family, baseball, and working out. He and I never spoke –– I learned all that from his obituary.
The truth is that my experience living parallel to my neighbor is the default for American culture today –– only 3 in 10 people say they know their neighbors. In 2023, the Surgeon General released an urgent advisory declaring isolation a public-health crisis. The nation’s chief doctor –– someone not prone to exaggeration –– called it the “loneliness epidemic.” He begins the report with this: “Four decades of research has produced robust evidence that lacking social connection...is associated with a significantly increased risk for early death from all causes.” The science is clear: isolation is measurably worse for your health than obesity, smoking, or drinking six alcoholic drinks a day. Loneliness kills.
A big part of American isolation comes from the places we live. About 70% of Americans live in a suburb, and there’s a lot to like –– privacy, autonomy, space –– but public health leaders are sounding the alarm, telling us that the places we live play a major role in making us more sick and less happy than we could be. Half of Americans say they’re lonely, and time spent with friends has dropped by two-thirds since 2003.
We can’t fix the whole country, but it’s time we take isolation seriously for ourselves. To do that, we need to think creatively about how we structure the places we live and consider what changes could positively affect our life.
Our culture has focused on creating private space at the expense of common space. In college we took common space for granted: the dining hall, the quad, the lounge. Then we graduate and assume everything we use should be ours alone. We can all have our own yard and garage and table saw and home gym and designer kitchen but it means we spend a tremendous amount of time and money trimming our grass, fixing our car, and making our dinner. When something breaks, it’s up to us. And things break a lot. And over time, we break, too.
Let’s look at a few of the challenges...
1: Neighbors are people I wave at while walking inside.
My wife and I own a rental property. I was showing it to a potential tenant who mentioned that he currently lived close to downtown. It turned out we lived fifty yards from one another for years and didn’t even recognize each other. There are other folks who are more pleasant but not much more known. These are people who we wave at in passing with a cordial smile and a “happy Thursday” before heading into the safety of our living room. Even though we live on the same street as these people, none of us share a community, or anything for that matter.
2: Suburban life sucks for children.
In order for my kids to play with another child, they must be driven to a friend’s house. There’s no possibility of them simply going outside and playing with another child, since their friends live a car trip away. It’s not even safe for them to be in the front yard unsupervised because of distracted drivers. It’s no wonder teenagers are so excited to get a car.
3: Front lawns are an absurd waste of time and money.
What is the deal with front yards? I have never seen anyone use them on a regular basis. Billions of dollars are spent in mortgages and lawn care to grow grass that never gets used. In the 1700’s, the English thought it was a status symbol to pay servants to cut a lawn by hand and the idea just won’t go away.
3: Cooking every night is a drag.
If we want to eat a healthy, tasty meal, the planning and prep starts several days in advance. We get the ingredients, and then one of us – usually my wife – spends much of the afternoon cooking dinner. By the time clean up is done, it’s almost time for bed. It takes a lot of time and effort.
Considering another way
There is a growing number of people who also see these problems with suburban life and are building new kinds of neighborhoods to address them. They want their kids to spend time with other children without being driven across town. They want to eat a healthy meal without having to cook every night. They want to know their neighbors and work together to build a community which is more than just a collection of isolated houses.
We typically use the word “neighborhood” to mean something quite large — 500 homes or more — but historically, neighborhoods have meant much smaller units of community. In the 1970’s, a Danish architect had an idea for a smaller neighborhood, with some space shared by the community. Today, there are thousands of these communities around the United States, Canada, and Europe building a style of living which is just that – a small group of neighbors who choose to share a bit more common space than usual.
The formal name is cohousing, which makes it sound stranger than it is. I call it a Tiny Neighborhood.
These are the key ideas:
- 15-30 households, with no more than 50 adults
- Each household has their own separate, privately owned home
- A large common house
- One or two weekly community dinners at the common house
- Everyone works together to maintain the common spaces
- Everyone pays a monthly HOA fee
- Cars are parked on the edges to open up space for activities
People who live in Tiny Neighborhoods remain engaged in the broader world with their own sets of friends and colleagues, but with the addition of stronger neighborhood ties. There is value in living in proximity to people you can trust, even if they’re not your closest friends, and if the Surgeon General is right, that proximity will improve the physical and emotional health of the entire group.
Cost
A home in a Tiny Neighborhood doesn’t cost much more than a traditional single family house. Included in the price is a share of the cost to build the common house, which typically represents about 10% of the overall cost. In other words, you can buy both a private home and a share of a 4000 square foot common house for only slightly more than the cost of a typical single-family home. Founding residents get to choose what is important to them about the common house and neighborhood, and determine what fits within their budget. Residents say that their need for a large personal home is reduced by the usability of the large common house, which naturally reduces cost.
The common space
What makes a Tiny Neighborhood special is the common space, which starts with the common house. Each community has a central, large, common house accessible by all residents with various amenities, which can include...
- A large kitchen and dining room
- A pool
- A TV room
- A gym
- A wood shop
- A play area for kids
- Guest suites for visitors
- Offices
- A music room
- A sauna
The specific amenities are dictated by the community as they work together in the process of designing the common house and the overall layout of the neighborhood.
Weekly dinners
A core aspect of a Tiny Neighborhood is weekly community dinners. There is a schedule of 1-2 dinners per week which are available to all residents and cooked by two adults in rotation. Instead of needing to cook every night, families know that they have a few nights each week where they can simply show up and have dinner handled by someone else.
Relating to neighbors
All relationships contain the possibility of conflict. To the extent that Tiny Neighborhoods includes more relationships with neighbors, it is natural that it would result in conflict from time to time. Decision-making within a Tiny Neighborhood is made by consensus and monthly meetings are held to make decisions about what is needed to keep the common spaces running well. In these meetings, people often disagree, discuss their differences, and make a decision about how to proceed. From the reading I’ve done on similar communities, residents acknowledge that there is occasional conflict but 89% of them said the community was a positive part of their life.
Maintenance
Each resident contributes a specified amount of ongoing maintenance and improvement work to keep the neighborhood in good shape. This ensures long-term stability for everyone, helps create a sense of shared ownership, and keeps costs down.
The Homeowners Association
Legally, a Tiny Neighborhood is no different from a typical neighborhood with an HOA. Importantly, each family owns the title to their home and can sell it whenever they would like. Every household pays monthly dues to the HOA fund, which covers expenses like fiber internet, maintenance of the common space and grounds, building repair, solar panels, and community-owned equipment. Residents often mention how useful it is to share various big items like a lawn mower, a grill, and a workshop.
Parking
The car parking and garages are located in a separate area from the individual houses, by design. This opens up a central courtyard useful for grilling, kids playing, gardening, and other activities typically reserved for a private back yard. This fosters community interaction and creates a safe space for kids to play without the threat of cars.
Maintaining privacy
A core principle of Tiny Neighborhoods is that some personal spaces can be shared spaces, but there still must be privacy. Tiny neighborhoods develop norms for when others are welcome and when they are not –– for example, one group said that if the window shutters were open, that meant people were welcome to ring the doorbell and stop by. Each family’s home remains their own, to do with as they please, and that individual privacy is an essential ingredient to making a Tiny Neighborhood work for the long-term.
Caring for the elderly
As people age, they want to stay where they are. It’s very common for older adults to resist moving into an assisted living facility until they absolutely cannot live on their own any longer.
Tiny neighborhoods provide an opportunity to include a few smaller units which are accessible for older people. Doing this extends their ability to live independently while remaining in proximity to a community that knows them and can check on them. In return, these older people can use their wisdom and free time to encourage and help the community. Plus, since assisted living facilities cost $50-100k per year, providing a space for an older person to age is not just honorable, it also allows them to pass on more of their hard-earned assets to their children. As I look forward to the days in which I am old, this is the kind of place I’d like to live in.
Conclusion
I hope this essay sparks imagination for how life could be different. If the Surgeon General is right and our health is at dramatically higher risk because of isolation, we should take seriously the question of what needs to be different, even if different looks a little weird.
I wrote this hoping that the idea will resonate with a few people. I believe that it’s possible to build a Tiny Neighborhood in Columbia. In the coming years, I want to explore building a community like this with other likeminded people. The benefits are substantial – a safe space for children to play and elders to age, a neighborhood which is more than just a set of isolated houses, a delicious dinner every Monday and, of course, a ping pong table.
If this sounds interesting, I’d love to talk.
Let’s make isolation less convenient.