We call these our “must haves” and “deal breakers.” These are things you must have in a community to keep you interested in wanting to do it, and the things that you can’t live with. We do a formal exercise on these points and it’s always interesting what comes up.

When I first found out about intentional communities through the Permaculture Design Course, I tried to put one together in Los Angeles amongst my existing friends. Some were game and went through the experiment with me. We had a facilitator, Ananda, who had been counseling intentional communities for 30 years. She really knew her stuff, and we learned a lot. It was good to do the process the first time with someone who had that level of experience.

She shared a lot of stories about failures and successes and guided us through visioning, naming goals, and deal breakers. This greatly accelerated the process of sorting out what was realistic with that particular group of people and we got to know each other much more deeply as a result.

At the end of this section, we’ll do an exercise that will help you sort out what type of community would be the best one for you.

In doing this exercise with different classes and groups, I’ve found that people’s deal breakers were often things that could be designed around. For instance, in the case of the first group I worked with, the dealbreaker that just couldn’t be resolved was pets. One group didn’t want any pets roaming around loose at all - the other group insisted on having their pet cats roam. This was resolved by agreeing to create two communities on one piece of land, separated by a wooded area and cat resistant hedge.

Another community was made up of vegans and omnivores. The vegans didn’t want animals, or meat being cooked in their kitchen. Again, we created two communities in one. There was enough reason for that group to work together to make that solution amenable. In other cases, communities restrict membership to only vegan or only omnivore, or only a specific religion or life philosophy.

My deal breaker is simple. Any community I live in must be willing to apply permaculture principles to both visible and invisible structures and strive toward as ideal a permaculture site as we can, together. I can design around a lot of other things, but that is something I prefer not to compromise on.

The other one I have is that people must genuinely care about respecting one another and basic thoughtfulness. That makes living anywhere so much easier. You don’t have to agree on a lot, if you agree on that. But if the people in the community genuinely apply those two things, I feel that I will be able to live with a wide diversity of other elements.

Other deal breakers that have come up that you can think about are aspects of any of the following:

Drug or alcohol use. Pets.Storage of junk.Control of toxins.Loud noises (like music blasting, loud machinery, etc).Attitudes.Politics.Religion.Sexuality (intentional communities practice everything from celibacy to open relationships; many do not dictate this one at all).Etc.

As a final note on creating communities, many people, once they get the idea, decide that they want it all. They don’t want to live anywhere or with anybody unless all the boxes are checked. While this is possible, it’s not always probable that one will end up in such a community.

Because we’re all human, it’s likely that even in a relatively ideal community, we’ll end up disagreeing and maybe even hitting up against full out conflicts. Maybe some of these will come up during the initial process of working through goals and deal breakers. Thus, our third leg in the next chapter.

7.5.3. Work Through Emotional Issues Up Front

You must be logged in to access this course