Affordable walkable neighborhoods

3 ways it can be done

Yellow-billed cuckoos eat many types of caterpillars, including varieties that can be pests. Click here to see more work by C. Arnold/Snowseasons.

What do you think of your neighborhood? My current (condo) home has a good sense of community and friendly neighbors. So does my dad’s 1950s-built neighborhood. And I can attend services and a club at a progressive church a short drive away. (Alas, busy roads/stroads discourage walking there.)

Having more incidental friendly encounters

But many Americans feel isolated from others besides their families — if they have local family members — and mention not seeing close friends for months at a time. This was true when I lived in New York City boroughs and neighboring New Jersey — it was easy to see humanity out and about, but sometimes dear friends lived across town or in a nearby state.

And it’s even more the case where people depend on cars. This American family in France has mentioned they were able to coordinate get-togethers with close friends only monthly or so while living in Houston and Denver. Now in a farmhouse where they walk into town, they gather with local friends fairly often.]

Building price-friendly neighborhoods near dear friends

Here and elsewhere in North America, many individuals are separated by where they live. Colleagues can dwell 22-25 miles apart, and some areas are limited by their zoning for large, single-family homes. In my case, an old friend moved to another city and built a house on vacant land — but few old friends can join them there because of high housing costs and the absence of small or terraced housing.

Many of you have seen these sorts of things happen in your area. What are the answers?

Example 1: Affordable community with transit

In this tiny house neighborhood in Clarkston, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta that is 3.4 miles from the MARTA train station and accessible to buses), neighbors can sit on front porches, gather in the courtyard, or chat as they pass one another on the way home from work.

The houses above are in a development called Cottages on Vaughan. The earliest homes at the site were sold with construction loans of $109,000 to $155,000; later, houses went for $184,000 to $201,000, compared with a median home price in Clarkston, Ga. of $300,000 in September 2022.

Example 2: Making affordable community in a recreation town

After engineer Chris Fuller’s employer moved from the University of Virginia’s base of Charlottesville to the hill town of Crozet, Va., he couldn’t find reasonably priced, near-office housing until he rezoned a lot and began plans to construct a tiny house pocket neighborhood.

The houses are predicted to sell at $220,000 to $420,000, according to this 2019 article. This 2021 link mentions that the local government approved building the pocket neighborhood within walking distance of downtown Crozet. In 2022, the median property cost in Crozet was $497,000.

Should we invest in building pocket developments in our area or elsewhere?

One possibility is building housing on a small section of farm land and leaving space for gardens and pollinators.

YouTuber Alex Fasulo moved after experiencing a hurricane in Florida, buying a farm in her native New York and working with Amish contractors to build a barn. She’s mentioned wanting the land to thrive for pollinators and produce side income that she reinvests in other local farmers by buying from them.

She often mentions the amount of farm land that will be available in the next 20 years as farmers retire, and why we should save it from being sold to factory farm operations and housing developments. A bit more info about this is here.

If you want to look into this, the Microlife Institute that built the Clarkston, Ga. Cottages on Vaughan provides free and paid materials on its website — including plans for building tiny houses with porches and a course on developing a tiny home neighborhood.

If you own a house but want to increase housing options in your area, the Microlife Institute website also shares information on building accessory dwelling units. or ADUs, in home backyards.

Thank you to followers and subscribers for making this newsletter possible. Do you know that likes or shares of Climbing Grasses make it visible to more people on Substack who may then support my work and supplement my retired dad’s Social Security income?

Other things inspiring me lately:

Kelcey Ervick’s illustrated Substack, with a bio that mentions she is “a writer who draws” and “author of 4 books including the graphic memoir, THE KEEPER (Avery/Penguin). Co-editor, FIELD GUIDE TO GRAPHIC LITERATURE. Comics in Washington Post, Rumpus, Believer. English Prof at Indiana University South Bend.”