Finding the Good Life on Danger Hill
Image Credit: Molly Pattison
I live at the top of what’s known in my town as Danger Hill. The hill got its name from a street sign at the bottom that says, “Danger. Hill.” A few years ago the sign went temporarily missing and for a while my neighborhood was called “12% Grade Hill.” Whether the old sign was returned, or somebody forked over for a new one, I don’t know—but something felt...off...until the sign was replaced.
Our “Room of Requirement.”
In fact, I live at the very top of Danger Hill, in a 2,300 square-foot ranch house my family of four shares with two other families. Right now, there are eight of us living here—six adults, two kids, four generations in total—plus two dogs. A ninth housemate is expected in November.
We call ourselves The Burrow, because one thing we have in common is our love for the Harry Potter books, and, when you put this many people in a modest-sized space, our home can sometimes resemble the Weasley’s home in that series—both for its clutter and its magic. (In fact, I’m writing this from a shed we call the Room of Requirement, another Harry Potter homage. It has storage on one side, an office on the other, and, if necessary, it will be our designated COVID-19 quarantine space.)
There’s a scene I love from The Chamber of Secrets, when the Weasleys have stolen Harry away from his horrible aunt and uncle’s house, and Harry sees The Burrow for the first time:
“It’s not much,” said Ron.
“It’s wonderful,” said Harry happily, thinking of Privet Drive.
We’re in the middle of major interior and exterior renovation projects, and back when people could still come over, I would apologize for how unfinished the house was. What we’ve heard again and again, sometimes in these exact words, is, “I love coming here. There’s a certain spirit about this place.” This makes us happy because hospitality is one of our core values.
The Good Life for Us
The “good life” looks very different for us in The Burrow than it does for many people. How the eight of us came together can be a story for a different time, but why we pursued this life in the first place is worth mentioning:
1. We all felt called to deep community.
When people ask us how three families share one house, my wife likes to say, “We share everything but the bedrooms.” (We need to make that explicit for folks who don’t know us.)
We share our space, time, and energy; we share the hard times and the good. We share dreams for our neighborhood. We hold in common the hope that our home will be a place of welcome for the hurt, rejected, and lonely. We even share a bank account for groceries and certain household expenses.
Living together this way is our own act of resistance against the economic and cultural norms of individualism and consumerism. One doesn’t have to do cohousing in order to resist, but that’s what it has looked like for our families. We wanted the challenge of living with humility and vulnerability with people who weren’t actual relatives. What holds us together are the bonds of affection, and the commitments we’ve made to one another. We also feel there is more we can accomplish together than apart.
2. There were practical considerations as well.
The author’s youngest daughter, with housemate Mike Leslie.
As I mentioned in Monday’s post, affordable housing is the number one issue in Silverton. In addition to just being an awesome place to live—“There’s a certain spirit about this place”—our proximity to Portland means that as more people get priced out of that superheated market, they’re choosing Silverton. Many young people who grew up here, and would like to stay here, can’t. They move to Salem...or even further away. Our younger housemates (the couple expecting a baby in November) were in this position. In addition to being interested in communal living, they longed to stay in Silverton for life. This is every rural community’s dream—young people who stick around—but buying a house was out of reach for them. It was even hard to find good rental options.
Living in community, especially within walking distance of downtown, there are other opportunities to save money. For example, we share most household goods, and we probably have at least one car fewer than we would if our three families lived separately. Another practical benefit for my wife and me is having four extra adults around who can be live-in “aunts” and “uncles” for our two daughters. Jane Jacobs talked about “eyes on the street”; I’m just happy to have extra “eyes on my kids.”
The Good Life for All
I bring all this up because sometimes it feels to me like we started cohousing, in part, to approximate the kind of community our ancestors had in mind as they built their towns and cities: the benefits (and challenges) of proximity, the spiritual, emotional, and economic support of neighbors, etc.
Evans Oaks Cottages, under construction.
As I described in earlier installments of this series, these are things I wanted for myself and others before we started cohousing—and before I became involved in the Strong Towns movement. But it wasn’t until I found Strong Towns that I was able to articulate why these things that felt so fundamentally human didn’t seem to be a priority for how we were designing and growing our places. Certainly I wasn’t able to articulate the best way to begin to change that. Now I feel equipped and empowered to advocate for change, and, living in community, means I never have to do it alone.
I’m excited for what’s happening here at the top of the hill. We have amazing neighbors, with whom we share meals and swap work and are starting new holiday traditions. We “co-chicken” with the house two doors down. Our older housemates are spearheading the creation of a cottage co-housing community directly behind our house. In what used to be three extra-large backyards, they are building 11 cottages as well as a common house that will be used to benefit the whole neighborhood. That means two of our housemates will be moving out of our house sometime this fall, which will be a sad day. That they are literally just across the property line makes it easier.
Danger Hill has long been known for its limited walkability. There’s now a sidewalk running halfway up the hill. Plus, thanks largely to the cottage community, there are more sidewalks at the top too, as well as multiple other walking paths. One of my housemates even helped #SlowTheCars on one of the roads near here.
Some of this work was begun before I started working for Strong Towns and my housemates became avid readers of the Strong Towns site too. But now we see our work and life here as part of a much larger movement to make Silverton (and all towns and cities in North America) stronger, more prosperous, and more financially resilient.
I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
This is the final part of a four-part series on the Strong Towns journey of our content manager John Pattison. You can find the other installments below:
Part One: We’re Not in Mayberry Anymore. And That’s a Good Thing.
Part Two: “Does God care how wide a road is?”
Part Three: I work for Strong Towns and sometimes even I know don’t know what the Strong Towns approach is.
Part Four: Finding the Good Life on Danger Hill
We’ve all come to the Strong Towns movement from different places, but what we fundamentally have in common is the desire to live a good life in a prosperous place. During Member Week, we ask for your help in making that a reality for more people. Will you help us grow the Strong Towns movement by becoming a sustaining member today?