Plenty of sunshine, farming opportunities and good neighbours are just a few of the items high on the list for members of Hearthstone Village, a group that plans to create Powell River’s first equity housing cooperative.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity to think about a different way to live together,” said Laura Berezan, one of the founding members of the group.
The idea first materialized in the summer of 2015 when a large, favourable piece of land came on the local real estate market and a group of friends and neighbours floated the concept of collectively purchasing it. Although that particular land sold quickly, the group continued meeting bimonthly over the next three years refining and building on its notion and were even trained in a system of governance known as sociocracy.
Today, Hearthstone Village is comprised of 10 families including 14 adults and eight children. The group describes itself as “a unique approach to environmentally sustainable community development,” or cohousing.
Cohousing originated in Denmark in the 1960s. It is typically incorporated similar to a strata, however, members are more directly involved with design and development; community involvement and sharing of resources is common. There are currently some 165 cohousing communities in North America, and they continue to grow in popularity.
“These days there are more equity co-ops being developed where people do have a measure of private ownership of their own dwelling,” said Hearthstone member Ron Berezan.
Some members of the group, including the Berezans, have previously lived in cooperative housing.
“Our family lived in housing co-ops when our kids were small,” said Laura. “Then we lived in an intentional community for another decade so it’s really exciting to explore that here in Powell River.”
One of the goals of the group is to have farmland to produce much of its own food, according to Hearthstone member and Terra Nostra Farm owner Aaron Mazurek.
As a permaculture teacher and designer, Ron is another member who can provide farming expertise.
At an open house meeting last weekend, Hearthstone updated the community on its progress. It will be legally incorporated within the next month and intends to have identified and purchased suitable land by the end of this year.
“We’ve had conversations with both the [Powell River] Regional District and City of Powell River, which have been very positive,” said Laura.
The group is currently accepting applications for membership.
For more information, email cohousinginpr@gmail.com.
