Lately I’ve been considering what it would look like for a group of people to enter into something known as tenants in common when buying a house. For a long time, I have thought about what it would look like to live in intentional Christian community with others, but I have always wondered what it would like if we went about trying to own a house. I have always had difficulty buying and owning a house because Jesus always seemed to lead a nomadic lifestyle. On the one hand, living a nomadic lifestyle is not practical. On other hand, living a nomadic lifestyle (to a certain extent, even in ancient Roman times) would have been impractical. So I have been considering this option called “tenants in common” where all people living in a house share a percentage ownership of the house.
For instance, lets say that seven people wanted to share a five bedroom house. I looked up one in my hometown of Santa Maria that is running for $545,000. Alone, none of us would be able to afford the house, but let’s say for the sake of the scenario that each person in the group contributed $10,000 to the down-payment and was given 14.2% ownership of the house. That would come out to a $70,000 downpayment with each person paying a monthly payment of $870 over ten years (about what you would pay to rent a two bedroom house). Imagine, instead of a 30 year fixed mortgage, paying a house off in ten years! Paying off the house in ten years instead of 30 is a savings of almost $600,000 in interest.
The next question people might ask is, “Well what happens when one family or person wants has to move on because of work or other circumstances?” The nice thing about being tenants in common is that the other tenants can buy out their share. Thus, the person leaves with a nice check for their share of the property (14% or about $76,300). The others can absorb this debt or add someone else into the mix to take over that person’s share of the house. It is somewhat like diversifying in the stock market because you have others to help you if one of the people has to leave the house. It works as a good community should.
But just living together does not automatically create Christian community. In fact, the creation of genuine community, as I’ve come to find over 23 years of existence, is not something that ever just “happens.” It is work. It has always been the work of God to try and bring people together and living in a house, where one is dependent on the others for the payment and upkeep of the house, can be quite a body-stretching experience. Dependence is not something we strive for or teach in our public schools. In fact, it seems that we teach just the opposite. To stay away from one another and to keep afloat “on our own.” What might this intentional Christian community look like as we all share in the hard times and the good?
Danny is a credentialed social science teacher in California, but is especially interested in students with special education (always the person first and the disability second). He is pursuing his education specialist credential at Cal State Northridge with help from President Obama who has given lots of money to teachers in residency willing to work for three years in Title 1 Schools. Please know that his thoughts are always forming and are subject to change at a moment's notice.
Danny, I wish I could offer some ground-breaking or profoundly insightful response, but as I read through these past 3 posts, I find these questions to be as perplexing as you do. I’m not sure where to go from here. I like the sound of “the tenants in common” idea and I’ve often imagined doing something like that (but who wants to move to Ramona?) but it is extremely difficult (not to mention the fact that it still turns out to be expensive… who’s got $10,000 for a down payment?!). You have to find people that you could stand living with. Now, I know there’s something consumeristic about picking and choosing who you live with, but part of community (indeed, part of collaboration) is discovering which things you can and can’t do together… one of which, in this case, is living together. You’d need to find people who are equally willing to sacrifice their perspective on how to run a house. When you move in with someone, they’re not going to assimilate to you if you can’t assimilate to them. Thus, you have to be willing to assimilate. Ahhh, it gets complicated… but who said it would be easy?
I suppose I think of it, rightly or wrongly, similarly to diversifying risk. If a person loses a job in this kind of scenario, the others in the house can pick up the slack until that person who lost the job can find another job. After this, the other person can pay back the others over time, but all of it would be interest free and decided in common amongst the people in the group. I also realized after writing this post that I was using a bit of an extreme example. To find five to ten people to live together in a house might be a bit much. It might be much more manageable to live in a two or three bedroom house together with others in common.
I have also heard of similar scenarios where Christians come together to create co-ops for health care. Claiborne talks about it on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/08/14/sr.bolduan.christian.cnn
I hope in the future to talk about how all of this would happen in concurrence with working within our neighborhoods to do what Claiborne does in his video of “practicing resurrection.” I wouldn’t mind living in Ramona, if I could get a job there. lol.
If you wouldn’t mind living in Ramona then you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into… Just kidding. Ramona’s cool. I’m really excited about our new Pastor at our church. He might have the opportunity to cultivate some good soil in this town!
I just read a good chapter in Shane Hipps book “Flickering Pixels” (I believe you’re read it): Chapter 12, Next Door Enemy… it’s very pertinent to the whole discussion about intentional community.