Ecoloha - The Regen Community Homes Network
Regenerative community living is the key to addressing the biggest issues of our time. By coming together in highly organized ways that properly reward participation we can grow and thrive in communal abundance while living far more sustainably.
Mission & Vision
Our mission is to cultivate an extensive network of regen co-op community homes and businesses to make it easy for anyone with the desire to step into a holistic lifestyle. Our vision is to create a parallel economy that incentivizes properly caring for the land and for each other.
The Keys to Regenerative Living
The keys to regenerative living are fairly straightforward but we live in a society without the proper incentives and an individualist culture. Our model provides a high level of communal abundance within each home and the greater network while addressing all the common pitfalls of co-living and stewarding of the commons, including financially incentivizing and gamifying the process of participation.
Our refined recipe for high-functioning co-op communities and businesses allows us to kickstart new ones easily and let them take on a life of their own within the context of a larger tight-knit network. Our intention is to find the beautiful balance between communal sharing and individual sovereignty.
Community Homes Network
Although there are plenty of pros around large scale land-based developments and we will eventually dabble in those ventures, we are initially focusing on utilizing existing single-family homes to quickly create regenerative communities where the utility of the properties are maxed out.
We retrofit homes into the ultimate co-living and co-working properties, with spaciousness created around the typical bottlenecks of kitchens and bathrooms. We utilize ADUs and Tiny Homes in order to provide more living spaces.
We believe that smaller nodes inside of a network of networks provides the greatest resiliency, flexibility and autonomy, but we understand that critical mass is necessary so we aim for finding distressed adjacent properties to join together and focus on specific neighborhoods.
High Level of Sharing & Abundance
Our community homes provide all the basic needs of food, water, clothing and transportation, through a single monthly fee, encouraging members to share more and consume less. Our tiered approach, holistic levels and sponsorship programs means that we are able to accommodate people desiring to live at vastly different levels.
Our stocked pantry provides all the basic bulk ingredients and our gardens and food forests provide a variety of fresh options, allowing our members to never have to shop in grocery stores. Our shared fleet of mostly electric vehicles and programs to incentivize members to share their vehicles allows us to provide ample transportation options. Members bring any clothes that they don’t wear regularly into a community-wardrobe.
High-Standards & Accountability
By far the biggest issue in communities, after interpersonal ones, is lack of accountability, leading to the well known effect of the tragedy of the commons. Our solution is having high-standards set by each sub-community, combined with stewardship of goods and spaces, along with accountability ultimately backed up with financial penalties. Additionally we utilize professional services to ensure maintenance.
Tiered Approach & Onramp
We utilize a tiered approach in order to make some of our homes and spaces accessible to people at all income levels while being able to offer higher-end and high-standard accommodations. Members in the higher tiers can access all the amenities at the lower ones but not vice-versa.
We provide ample opportunities for individuals to uplevel through our various community-based businesses and startup incubator. The tiers also help with the vetting processes, ensuring that people are supported sufficiently during the onboarding process and ready to step into cohesive co-living.
Supporting-Members, Co-Working and Event Spaces
Some members may choose to live elsewhere and just participate as Supporting-Members, which provides them with access to the rest of the highly-desirable amenities in the network, like the co-working and event spaces. This allows members to onramp by dipping their toes in and eventually choose to co-live once they are ready to take the full plunge.
We put a large emphasis on the co-working and event spaces in order to be a hub for the greater community, like a regen community center, and to be able to host workshops and classes.
Network Effect
Our network effect and focus on specific geographic areas allows us to provide a high-degree of sharing an abundance of resources effectively and providing a variety services. It's the key to scaling, operating at a high-level and creating parallel micro-economies.
By structuring the networks in a nested format we can provide autonomy and experimentation within the micro scale while enjoying the buffeting effect on a macro scale.
The larger our network becomes, the more of a Goldilocks effect we can produce within each community home.
Goldilocks Effect
The Goldilocks effect in communities means finding the perfect one where you fit in just right, which can be a huge challenge but by utilizing our matching system and by bringing the various communities together in person to connect deeply, people can see who they resonate with the most and apply to live together.
Coherence is the magical state when a community is vibing exceptionally well together, which makes it much easier for things to flow there and for personal growth.
Psychology & Growth Mindset
Most communities struggle and even fail due to the interpersonal dynamics, which is why we account for this and put so much emphasis on the psychology of developing a growth mindset, including incentivizing coaching, peer therapy, mediation and conflict resolution.
We are able to provide all these services, which typically feel out of reach, mostly through community members in our extensive network, who are compensated through our tokens or through rent deductions.
Our holotropic approach includes facilitating weekly events, such as authentic-relating dinners and group outings, which bring and bond people together, making it easier for them to work through challenges and love each other.
Bringing People Together
We incentivize the organization of regularly scheduled events, especially community meals and nature excursions, since these are the glue that creates the strong bonds which help people get through the interpersonal challenges and make sharing so much easier.
Governance & Transparency
We utilize a sociocracy approach for our governance in order to provide a balanced leadership structure all the way up the chain, so each community has elected leaders which elect regional leaders and so on to represent their interests.
DAOs have revolutionized how organizations practice transparency so we pick the best parts of this new way of functioning to ensure that everyone within the organization can see all the details and provide their input.
Our Economic Model
Our rent starts at about twice the market rate because we offer a fully-inclusive living environment and because we provide so many ways to recoup the costs by participating in the community, so if a person takes full advantage of the opportunities they are able to live of a third or even a quarter of the amount they would normally need to live by themselves, while enjoying a lot more free time.
Most of our incentives are provided as tokens to be redeemed within the community, like for rent or supplemental goods and services, in order to encourage the creation of a parallel economy and transitioning away from fiat.
We utilize a variety of legal vehicles with the core being the co-ops, which allow people to buy into the community, just as if they were buying equity in a home, allowing them to participate in profit sharing while locking in the value of their dollars, preventing the diminishing effects of inflation since our token value is on bonded on an augmented curve, incentivizing early adopters while preventing outright speculation.
Our nonprofit allows us to receive donations for goods which can be utilized within the community network and the greater community, essentially creating an alternative to Goodwill for high-worth items.
Investment Opportunity
In addition to our co-op token investment option, we provide a traditional investment opportunity for impact investors with a 5% yearly return in fiat or a 10% yearly return in tokens. We believe that providing people the security of the necessities of water, food and shelter is the ultimate impact investment in this age of insecurity.
Since the co-op owns the real estate and we utilize refinancing as a way to cash out value we can guarantee returns in all market conditions, even as the recession unfolds.
Recession Riding
Recessions are actually wonderful opportunities to take advantage of the low property prices, especially foreclosures, and be able to offer housing with fully-inclusive living costs that ends up being much less then people were paying when living individually.
We provide a program to prevent foreclosures for people wishing to enter their homes into our network, where they short-sell it to us and we provide them with credit for their equity that they can utilize to rent in the network.
As more people downsize and donate their unused items, we are able to add them to our network to be utilized in the most efficient ways, like through our community-based businesses.
Co-Op Community-Based Businesses
We take a professional approach to the services utilized by the community by forming official co-op business which also serve the greater community through a PMA guided by the triple bottom line values. This is how we ensure that all the maintenance tasks, such as cleaning and organizing, are performed properly to keep the spaces at a high-standard while keeping our rates affordable.
Our network of Co-Op Businesses allows us to provide a plethora of evergreen employment opportunities for community members, encouraging them to move into one of our network hotspots and learn new skills while working in conscious businesses.
A PMA structure allows us to bypass some of the onerous regulations in addition to providing subscription revenue to the network and encouraging more usage of the services to get more value from the subscription fee.
The cornerstones of our co-op businesses are cleaning, handyperson, pet-services and tiny home building since we believe that these will always be in high-demand. Our tiny home building is primarily intended for our network but we aim to expand to keep up with the growing demand nationally.
Startup-Incubator &
Sponsorship-Programs
Life can be challenging so we provide special sponsorship opportunities to individuals who are struggling and wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of becoming a member and living in our network of community homes.
Our startup-incubator program provides a runway for aspiring entrepreneurs to have the time, space and some funding to launch their ventures in a supportive environment by exchanging shares of their business.
Resiliency
Resiliency is a major focus so we aim for being as self-reliant as possible in order to minimize our connection to the grid and supply chains. One of our core values is that water and soil are sacred, so we make sure to use it as wisely as possible, capturing all the graywater and rainwater possible, storing copious amounts of it and growing in innovative ways where the soil uses as little water as possible.
We utilize aquaponics and other smart permaculture growing methods that produce exceptionally high yield while being able to produce high protein and high nutrient products.
We believe that there is an abundance of food already being grown but the food preservation and distribution systems are the keys to ensuring we prevent food waste, so we partner with producers and markets to convert their potential waste into value added products.
Get Involved
We need your help to refine the model, spread the word and start building out the network so we can be ready to execute as the opportunities unfold. There are so many ways to get involved, so please reach out with what excites you the most about this and how you see yourself fitting into the larger picture.