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I was brought up in a time where success and the American
Dream was measured by owning a home and the goal was to
get a bigger and bigger home as quickly as you could and
then to fill that home with stuff.
For a long time I have felt that more and bigger is just
a way to enslave myself to the care and upkeep of my home
and the cleaning of all these worldly possessions even to
the detriment of my family and my personal happiness. My
husband and I found ourselves spending obscene amounts on
the cooling and heating of our older home and hours of our
leisure time caring for a big yard and pool.
In our country over the last 30 years our homes have doubled
in size while our families have shrunk in half. I recently
read that our country’s largest real estate growth
is in storage rental units for all our stuff. Hoarding is
now recognized as a psychiatric disorder.
Around 2000 I saw a small review of Sarah Susanka’s
book: Creating the Not So Big House and it struck a chord
with me. I immediately went out, bought the book, and read
it from cover to cover. In it was a small community of cottage
style homes built around a central green. I knew that was
where I wanted to live. It spoke to me of a simpler time.
It was a place where neighbors knew each other, spent time
together, and shared some common resources.
In the years since then, I have searched for such a community
in Dallas without success and have wondered how I could
create a community myself in Dallas. I have also become
aware of the need to be a responsible custodian of this
planet and so have become very involved with green living.
About two and a half years ago I discovered the “cohousing”
movement and found a few like minded people living nearby
that have been walking a similar path with the same desire
for interaction with a close community while living as lightly
on the land as possible. We searched for about two years
for a piece of property in the White Rock Lake area where
we could create our community. We are thrilled to own the
property on the corner of Easton Rd and Lake Highlands in
an old established neighborhood with an active neighborhood
association and only a mile from White Rock Lake.
Deborah Skinner
President of the White Rock Crossing HOA
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