Tanguy Homesteads

[Carolyn Miles]

Dear Community folks:
At the request of Bob Buckley I'm posting this short
description of Tanguy. We are a community of 38 families located 35
miles west of Philadelphia and 18 miles north of Wilmington, on 100 acres.
The six families who founded the community in 1945 envisioned a
community where we know and care for their neighbors, yet have the
privacy of our own homes. In many ways it is in structure similar to
co-housing communities. Each family has two acres of land deeded with
our homes, and we hold equal shares in the remaining 10 acres of land,
on which we have a pond, woods, picnic area, playground, ballfield,
road and community center. We gather as a community for holidays, for weekly
pot luck dinners, and to organize activities for children and adults.
Responsibilites for the community are shared through committees and
through monthly business meetings, where we make most of our decisions
by concensus. We value racial, religious and age diversity within the
community. Positions of authority, such as president, treasurer,
secretary, rotate through the community on a yearly or biannually.

Associate membership is available for $75 per year, subject to
membership approval, and you then are able to use the pond and
playground. To receive our monthly newsletter and calendar it
costs $10 per year. There is currently one house on the market in
Tanguy.

For more information, I will snail mail you a brochure.

Thanks for your interest.

Carrie Miles
President (1996) of Tanguy Homesteads

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Carolyn Miles, M.P.H.
mi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu
******************************************************

[Mike Bodkin]

I've been living with my wife in an intentional community in Northern California for the
past 5 years; it's been around for 20 years and sounds very much like Tanguy in
philosophy. We have 2x a month potluck dinners on a Friday, followed by a Saturday
workday. Separate houses and families, but lots of community projects and fun too. One
difference: we are a full partnership, and title is held by the partnership to all the
land and houses. But we're all partners, of course.

[Michael Elph Morgan]

Mike, What is the name of your community?

___________________________________________________________
Michael Elph Morgan | | el...@umich.edu
FIC Web Weavers | http://www.ic.org/ | fic...@ic.org

[Mike Bodkin]

It's Monan's Rill Association. We're in the FIC book, I think. I'd very
much like to see this newsgroup get into more substance, such as
different organizational structures, agreements, and financial
arrangements, as well as social issues. Also, of real interest to me
because we don't do this (and it appeals), to hear from groups that are
self-sufficient or nearly so and how that works for them.

However, I have to admit to a degree of nervousness about posting on the
net because of privacy concerns for our community, so I won't be saying
anything more about our location.

Mike Bodkin

[Carolyn Miles]

The community Mide Bodkin describes, with the partnership owning the
land, sounds like two communities in this area: Bryn Gwelyd (Bucks Co.
PA) and Arden (Wilmington DE). The problem that Tanguy ran into was
when people wanted to buy houses and get a conventional mortgage.
Banks did not like having the land deeded to the community, so the
original structure needed to be changed. Currently we have three
houses out of 38 that still have the land deeded to the community, and
the home owners "rent" from Tanguy. If the community had the funds to
provide our own mortgages then it would work, but we don't have that
kind of cash.
Thanks,
Carrie Miles, Tanguy Homesteads

[Mike Bodkin]

> ******************************************************The issue of financing for homes does come along with the decision to
have a full partnership own all the houses. You're absolutely right that
banks don't like this situation and won't lend to it. At our community
currently, there are 3 ways we deal with this: 1) Everyone is
encouraged, by policies we've adopted, to invest as much as possible here
at the community. Many members have paid off their homes to the
community by borrowing from family members and so on. 2) The community
as a whole has sought stable and relatively long-term loans from friends
and family, and passes on the interest rate to those who must borrow from
the community for a house. 3)Some of us--my wife and I fit here--have
had to borrow money from the community to get a house here. Over time,
the community will owe less in its own obligations than that owed to it
by house borrowers (we're slowly paying down our community debts); then
it will be a matter of deciding collectively what is a fair interest
rate. The big advantage to our method, I think, is in ruling out
speculative factors in house prices. As the community owns all the
houses, we have some control over houseing costs.

--Mike Bodkin

[krus...@gmail.com]

Hi I am trying to contact a highschool classmate, Annie Weimer,
I am Kruskal Hewitt

[jess....@gmail.com]

Please mail me a brochure.

I lived adjacent to Tanguy Homesteads in the early 70's.

Jessica Curtis
135 Corson Ave
Staten Island NY 10301