Finding PLACE with Natural Burial

I have long struggled with how to make “affordable” housing. What feeds us, what feels meaningful, what is essential, how much and what do we really need to feel fulfilled?

What if we led more integrated lives, where places held layers of meaning? What if your home was built in community, and you can remember where that tile came from and who helped you get that cut just right? What if the farm a short walk down the road let you trade time in the fields for fresh Biodynamic produce all summer? What if your children and your neighbor’s children could walk to school together, and you could share after-school childcare? What if your backyard was also a preserve for memories of our community’s loved ones? What if you could walk through a forest with your grandchildren or loved ones for years, then be buried there and have a tree planted over you, so they could come visit and remember you alive in that same place? What if you could own your home outright in a few years? And what if you could afford all this on a minimum wage job?

Lately I’ve had a new idea for a kind of affordable housing in my community which I think this makes all this possible. I want to develop a small Planned Rural Residential Development in association with a green burial cemetery.  The land for the green burial (up to 80 acres) would be owned by a non-profit cemetery corporation and serve as part of the open space reserve requirement for the PRRD. The land for the houses may be owned by a limited equity co-op, in service to affordable housing in perpetuity.  I would like to include a pole barn or other covered space to host DIY tiny home building workshops, where people from different walks of life can come together and share resources of materials and know-how to permit and build their own small homes or ADUs, and have some RV pads with hook-ups for people to live in their THOW’s (tiny house on wheels) on site until they find a more permanent location.

If you want to know more about natural burial, check out this website: https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/