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Sunset Magazine Profiles Portland Co-housing Couple

Monday, March 3rd, 2008
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In an article titled "Green in Portland," Sunset profiles three couples, one of them living in a co-housing development. Portland is famous for its natural beauty, it's commitment to environmental values and its sheer liveabilty.

"Clearly,this town is doing something right. And it all boils down to one simple idea: In Portland, people work together to get stuff done."

Two of those people are Laura Ford and Josh Devine, who live in an infill co-housing community called Sabin Green

". . . four homes on a 75- by 100-foot lot that once housed only a single two-bedroom bungalow and garage. Created by Eli Spevak, a developer specializing in affordable housing, and designed by Mark Lakeman, the homes have porches and trellises and face a central courtyard that includes built-in benches, gardens, a bike shed, and a teahouse with a living green roof. The thriving Alberta Arts District is three blocks away.

Josh and Laura's house, which they bought last year for $143,000, is a mere 530 square feet. "The greenest thing about our home is its size," says Josh, a math and social studies teacher at a school for special-needs kids. "It's the perfect way for young or low-income people to get into the housing market." The arrangement is also a handy mixture of principle and practicality. Says Laura, an assistant for the Food & Farms program at a nonprofit called Ecotrust, "Living in a tiny home really helps with our footprint, but at the same time, it's what we could afford."

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LA Ecovillage Threatened

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

Last week The New Statesman, a British current affairs magazine, carried a story about the LA Ecovillage in its online edition. The blogger, Johnathon Dawson, usually writes about life at Findhorn, an ecovillage in Scotland.

I want to devote my blog this week to an extraordinary development unfolding in a poor, multi-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood some 6,000 miles from here - in inner-city Los Angeles.

Why on Earth would I do that is a column called Life At Findhorn?! Well, first because we are part of a much larger global family, one of whose members, the Los Angeles Ecovillage, is engaged in quite wonderfully distinctive and inspiring work. Second, because I have just returned after spending ten days there, participating in the annual board meeting of the Global Ecovillage Network."

The Threat

"It is great, if all too rare, to see an ecovillage get stuck in in an urban context, really working in cooperation with their neighbours and helping transform and humanise an entire neighbourhood.

Now, however, the initiative is under threat - and this is where you, dear reader, may just be able to help. The LA school department is planning to locate yet another school in the neighbourhood - there are several there already. This would entail demolishing 35 affordable housing units (all to rare in the city) and even more bussing in of kids from other parts of town.

The ecovillagers are fighting it tooth and nail and have set up an online petition asking the authorities to find another site. If you feel inspired, visit http://www.laecovillage.org/ and sign up."

The next meeting with the school district is February 28. For updates and a direct link to the petition go to http://www.laecovillage.org/LAUSD2008.html

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