How It All Began

Liberty Village began in concept in 1989 with a dedicated small group of Burning Souls who read about Cohousing in McCamant & Durrett’s new book, “Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves”. The group searched for a site for 4 years while they recruited, grew, and coalesced about their vision of an inter-generational community where they could share a strong sense of community with mutual support and respect. The site was optioned in 1993, acquired in 1995, started development in 1998, and the first homes were moved in 1999.

During the first few years of living in community, we built and occupied four to six new homes each year. By 2003 we had completed 18 homes. Children have attended local schools and been home schooled, thrived, gone to colleges and moved on to productive lives. Some founding residents have passed away and been honored and cherished in their absence. Seven homes have been resold with newcomers welcomed warmly to our community. Life goes on and we support one another in many, many ways. We are moving forward to build another 10 homes and a permanent Common House.

Our interim common house in Liberty Village is an adaptation of an original detached home that gives us an ample community kitchen, dining room, sitting room/lounge, kids play space and a community restroom/bath, as well as ample equipment storage and a spacious outdoor porch. Community meals, business meetings, team meetings as well as social gatherings are held there. Community members take responsibility for cleaning and maintaining this space. There is a monthly sign-up sheet posted for volunteers to sign-up to clean the common house and major events are shown on the community calendar on the Liberty Village web site.

Most homes are semi-detached, side-by-side, to provide higher energy efficiency, greater affordability, and maintain the pedestrian character that makes Liberty Village easily walked and a delight for raising children. This leaves over 15 acres in common open space for our Village Green, wetland and woodland conservation, gardens, orchard, landscaping and other community uses. All available lots are semi-detached and we have many varieties of home plans that have been built here.