[MD] Living In the Ground? Like Rabbits?

[John Carl]

So a good while back, Lu remembers it as 1991 because she bought a little
tie-dyed shirt for Em, who was at that time, an only child, Bill was going
to UC Santa Cruz and was an intern for my "company".

It was some sort of academic/internship deal, with the UCSC (Go Slugs!)
system, which, while fully accredited, is not of the most rigorous academic
reputation.  I mean at that time, they went the total Pirsigian route of
non-grading: you could get a bacherlor's degree, from a State University
without submitting to the horrors of A B C D F Judgement.

Totally bitchin', man.

Bill's academic advisor was pretty open to Bill doing whatever he wanted
because he thought it was so cool that Bill was the grandson of Neal
Cassady, and thus, carte blanche for Bill to get college credits for helping
out my company, Community Builders, (employees, none) set up a booth at
Earth Day in Santa Cruz and talk to people about CoHousing.

I'd learned about CoHousing from meeting Katie McCamant at a Community
Building Workshop in Marin a few years earlier.  The whole workshop was
organized by M. Scott Peck's Foundation for Community Encouragement and
mainly comprised a group trying to get the first CoHousing project in
America (at Berkely, wouldn't ya know) off the ground, though I didn't know
any of that at the time.  I just liked Peck's Community Building model and
wanted to see it in action.

That was a pretty memorable weekend, but I'll tell that story another day,
the main thing I took from the workshop was a desire to learn more about
intentional community, and the book CoHousing, by McCamant and Durrett.  I
was all excited about it, named my construction company, "Community
Builders" and set up this little booth at the Santa Cruz Earth Day Event,
with Bill's help.

I didn't have much to offer people, no cool displays or much in the way of
marketing materials.  Just this brochure that people could take and send in
the form if they were interested in CoHousing, some chairs in the shade and
a big cooler of ice water to offer.

I got just one response, so in some respects the thing was a failure, but
near the end of the day, I had one guy come by and he was so interesting
that he made the whole thing worthwhile.

Although, truthfully,  marketing endeavors like this are never complete
failures; like scientific experimentation gone awry, you always learn
something.  You gain information, for instance, the information that the
wacko hippy population of Santa Cruz thinks your ideas are too far out?
 That informs you the time is not yet right for CoHousing.  A valuable
insight in its day.

 But the best part, as I said was this one guy I met.  He was around 50, I'd
say.  A successful looking kinda guy and he asked lots of intelligent
questions.  He seemed surprised at my whole endeavor and was intrigued
enough to sit down and really engage me, and that was rare enough that I got
a big kick out of him.  But even better, he told me a story that stuck with
me through the years.

He'd come up with an idea for a development situated in the foothills, of
in-ground housing.  The advantages of this kind of housing is pretty well
known by now, but this guy was a money-ed developer who had architectural
drawings, building code issues worked out and everything.  He took the whole
scheme to Wells Fargo, and got an hour with a vice president and laid out
his plans and ideas, the insulation values, the fire protections, the fact
that you could gaze down the hill and you wouldn't see any other homes -
you'd have a view all to yourself.  All these really neat advantages.

After he was done, the banker just stared at him for a beat and then goes,
"Live underground?  Like rabbits?"

I burst out laughing when he told me this, and he laughed along with me.  He
said at that moment he realized something, this vice president just didn't
have vision.  He was being helpful in showing me the greatest obstacle to
truly good ideas is the bank.

 Why should bankers take risks on funding housing that is actually higher in
quality but an unknown entity?  Bankers are all about safe and predictable
risks, Real Estate Values based upon the tried and true instantiation of
boxes and boxes in neat tidy rows.  Known quantities that you can plug into
your derivative formulas that are guaranteed to make you profit.

Yeah.  And how's that working out for you these days, Wells Fargo?

Meanwhile, McCamant and Durret have designed and built more than a few
CoHousing projects, including one nearby me in Nevada City.  AND they live
there now and moved their offices here from the Bay Area.  I've been meaning
to drop in on them someday and tell them that story, and see if Katie
remembers me from all those years ago.  They'll be around.  If all goes
well, they'll outlast Wells Fargo.