Thursday, August 4, 2016

Tiny Houses in Tiny Towns, Gossip Kills.

Why is this movement so hard?  Can we even call it a movement?

We found the whole thing really interesting when we started out because there was no movement to our moving.  We wanted something very simple and were very clear about that when we got started.  The main thing was that we were not interested in the thing itself as a business.  See, it was never our intent to be a great big thing.

The reason that we would call it a movement is because there are so many people interested in it.  Still, we had to ask ourselves how many people were actively interested and how many were Pinterested (a word that we came up with).  When we say that people are "Pinterested" we mean that to them it is something that looks cool and that they are willing to participate in on line.

I am not trying to be mean when I bring up people like this.  There are a lot of people who are interested in a lot of things and who only engage on line.  The problem is that projects like ours take place in the real world and thus there are stakes to being involved in a project like ours.  This was another reason that I said what I said about money (see previous post...). 

The moment something like this comes around there is interest.  Ears perk up.  For the most part, that interest is harmless, but then there are times when it translates to meeting some interesting people.  One of the first questions we asked was that people have a timeline and be actively engaging in a transitional life.  Are you starting to save?  Are you starting to learn?  What are your price ranges? and so on.

The best place to do something like this, we found, was in a small town adjacent to a large city.  We wanted to find someplace where the land was cheap and all of the major amenities were within a half hour drive or so.  The problem with this plan and what we were doing was that there were only small towns and those small towns led to people spreading the word about things they knew nothing about.

It started slowly at first, with people showing up at events that we did not invite.  That was ok.  We were happy about that at first.  Then we had people who said that they were in charge of it. We had people show up on the property unannounced during construction and calls from the cops and neighbors saying that people were camping in our woods.  More and more people wanted to take over this thing that was ours, yet not be involved.  At a certain point, we stopped talking to people, but it didn't end.

The final straw for us was when we got an Facebook email from the closest town.  We had opted for unincorporated acreage and technically, we were not even a part of the town that was writing to us.  We were a part of the town on the other side.  The email was ominous and bold and it came on a Friday afternoon from a new Facebook account back at a time when you could be anonymous on Facebook.  It was addressed to one individual in particular and it said that he had to contact city hall on Monday.

That night, we met up at Carol's condo in the city and thought about the whole thing.  We thought about how uncomfortable it made us and what must have happened.  Someone was talking.  There were 8 of us at that time and none of us had contacted anyone related to the government, local or otherwise.  What made it more suspicious was that it was the wrong city.  there were other things.  People would approach members and say that they had talked to our real estate agent about our project.  Several people began to talk about all the ways they were going to build things on our property.  Several people began to talk about how they wanted to volunteer in exchange for being able to live on our property.  It was interesting to say the least.  Frightening at worst.

I have said it before, I will say it again... Once you figure out how to get away from everyone, everyone tracks you down to figure out how you did it. 

I am going to continue to write this blog and these first couple of posts are pretty much about how City in the Woods came to be and why we d
o things the way we do them.  We are, so far, a secret little town of 9 and we aim to keep it that way.  We are going to start doing more though.  We have a few classes lined up and some big discussions in the works about sustainability and more.  We have achieved something amazing and we want to duplicate it.

If you are in the NC, SC, GA area and you are ready to make the leap, you can join our group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1631743643802914/

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