East Bay Cohousing - Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville/SF

March 5, 2010 12:00 PM - 13 attended

Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage: Lunch with Community Founders (Berkeley Downtown)

Gather Restaurant (map)

Selected By: Betsy Morris

12 photos of this Meetup

Uploaded by: Raines Cohen

Join Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage founder and Raines' fellow FIC boardmember Tony Sirna over lunch at Berkeley's new ultra-green restaurant, Gather, at the David Brower Center downtown. Learn how this band of Bay Area pioneers created new community in rural Northeast Missouri, living ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives, and sharing the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle, while enjoying fresh organic localvore cuisine (drinks not included). The price includes a pizza or sandwich, sharing in appetizers and sparkling water, tax and tip, and helps pay for our guests' lunches. Advance reservations required.
Unique features of Dancing Rabbit that California Cohousers can learn from include:

Natural building, with straw bale and cob construction, allowing many members to build their own homes
Renewable energy, tapping sun and wind power to operate off-the-grid
A biodiesel-powered vehicle cooperative pool
An internal economy with its own currency, barter, and an income-sharing subgroup
Design for growth, with plans to reach 1,000 members through villages and neighborhoods
Biodiversity enhancement via wildlife habitat preservation through clustering and restoration through native planting and permaculture, tree planting, and more.

The Dancing Rabbit Vision
In 1997 the DR Land Trust (DRLT) purchased 280 acres in the rolling hills of northeastern Missouri. We are now 12 years deep into pioneering and constructing buildings while planning and developing community structure. People's social and economic needs are met primarily on-site and locally, though a few support themselves doing web work or off-site consulting. There is an ever-increasing emphasis on internal economy, including a lot of barter and a well-used internal currency. Eventually, we see 500-1,000 people living in our village, with businesses and homes surrounding the village green.

As you might expect, ecological sustainability is the primary focus of our long-term vision and our daily lives. Residents agree to follow ecological covenants and sustainability guidelines. We build our homes using alternative techniques such as straw bale and cob, powering them with renewable energy from sun and wind. Vehicles at DR are owned cooperatively and powered by biodiesel. Overall, we eat an ever-increasing amount of local, organic, and in-season foods, including many home-grown vegetables.

We strive to be good stewards of our land, with much of our acreage reserved as wildlife habitat. In the grasslands we are reintroducing native prairie plants to help revitalize our region's biodiversity. We have planted over 10,000 trees to restore our land to its pre-settlement ecology, stabilize the riparian zone, and provide a sustainable source of wood for our community in years to come.

Diversity is an important element within our human population as well. Our village is composed of individuals, families, and an income-sharing community. We look forward to having other subcommunities join us, and encourage the development of cohousing and cooperatives. To allow for economic diversity and simple living, we keep lease rates and membership dues low and have no buy-in fee.

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13 attended

4.503 (3 ratings)

Event Host

Betsy Morris
Cohousing Coach, Organizer

+2 guests
Event Host

Raines Cohen
Cohousing Coach and Aging In Community Author, Co-Organizer

+2 guests
Karen Edwards
Roger Studley
Lucci
A former member
+1 guest

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Imagine lively people-scaled communities dotting the San Francisco Bay Area - places co-created by their residents for raising kids, for retirement, for growing food or simply living well by sharing more. The Bay Area already has ecovillages, and cohousing neighborhoods, resident-owned housing cooperatives, and group houses -- real world places where we can live more sustainably through a more cooperative way of life. You can have both privacy and community when you know your neighbors on purpose, in day-to-day relationships based on common vision and values.

East Bay Cohousing (EBCOHO) is a Bay Area-wide MeetUp. We connect a wide variety of kindred spirits and resources. We support individuals wanting to learn more, forming groups looking to create community together, and members of existing communities. We are mostly in the East Bay and San Francisco; others are from the North and South Bay, Los Angeles, Nevada, and other parts of the US and Mexico.

There are over two dozen cohousing communities in the greater Bay Area, (more cohousing in Oakland than any other U.S. city). There are also dozens of other emerging and long-established intentional communities. EBCOHO members have recently bought or rented homes in cohousing neighborhoods and cooperatively owned apartment buildings in Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland , Pleasant Hill, Grass Valley, Santa Rosa, and Nevada City. We have members living in Swan's Market Cohousing, Triple Point, Temescal Commons, Berkeley Cohousing, Parker Street Coop, Berkeley Town House, Addison Court Coop and established forming groups like East Lake Cohousing (formerly North Oakland Cohousing).

Extra bonus for 2012: The National Cohousing Conference is coming to town in June!

We host EBCOHO events for members, and link you to other events featuring a global network of friends and allies: pioneers in cooperative culture and sustainable communities: urban farmers, affordable housing developers, green builders, and creative visionaries in the movements for more open, user-friendly and collaborative technologies, economies, and governments. There's a global reinvention of communiies going on - both on the ground and online -- and the Bay Area is one of the world's epicenters.

EBCOHO has more events than our MeetUp-based home page can show fully, so please click on our Calendar to see more. Join for free to get involved! There's no charge for basic membership, but supporting members get discounts on some events, including socials, and workshops, cohousing books, and Cohousing Coaching.

Join us for an orientation, for social events, discussion, talks with exciting speakers, and hands-on workshops to learn the tools for developing good group relationships, and the real estate development process.. Find others who share your vision for supportive neighbors. Do it for yourself, for your family, for your parents, do it for the Earth! Make 2012 the year to deepen YOUR community connections.