How communal-living groups are riding out the pandemic

Daily life in shared communities can bring support, company and solidarity. But how do these communities adapt when a pandemic hits?

A tiny eco-community on Austrian farmland. A co-housing unit on a Canadian island. A world-renowned spiritual centre home to hundreds in the Scottish countryside. These alternative shared-living set-ups all thrive based on co-operative frameworks. But Covid-19 has made communal living more complicated amid restrictions – and its nature as a disease with rapid community spread.

It’s hard to establish how many people are living in intentional communities (generally defined as communities planned around a social ideal or collective values, often involving shared resources). But by one estimate, they’re home to around 100,000 people worldwide, and growing. There’s a broad spectrum of options, from throwback hippie communes to more professionalised operations. What they share is a commitment to communal living: a premise the pandemic has challenged. With curbs on gatherings and other components of community building, many alternative communities have needed to adopt new routines.

In some ways, the crisis has established the resilience of certain types of shared living situations. In a survey of 75 intentional communities, 15% reported minimal or positive effects of the pandemic, and only 5% reported severe or negative impacts. Yet, it hasn’t been all rosy; even pre-pandemic, communities often found finances hard to square. For many, financial sustainability has become a further cause for concern as the pandemic has eroded income sources that modern communities depend on.

These three communities – small, mid-sized and large – are weathering the Covid-19 storm, but in each case, finances have suffered and tensions have emerged. Still, like the majority of those surveyed, residents are grateful to be living communally in a period of disruption and loneliness.

The Obenaus Community sits on 2.5 hectares of farmland in southeast Austria, near the Slovenian border. It’s a peaceful place, where the night sky is untouched by light pollution, the nearest neighbour is a half-mile away and residents can live in balance with nature. Their communal spaces include a kitchen (they generally share meals), a coworking space and a wood workshop. Residents and visitors – who typically include young and middle-aged consultants, facilitators and travellers – pitch in with farm and household tasks as well.

In the eyes of Rainer von Leoprechting, 55, who left behind office life in Brussels to co-found Obenaus eight years ago, communal life came with advantages during the pandemic. “In a rural community like ours, people are already spending their time more or less with the same people. But there’s a variety of them,” he explains. “And it’s one of the reasons you live in a community: you’re not too confined to your very small nuclear family, but you have a wider range of relations. And that proved very positive in lockdown.”

The Obenaus residents lived as a household of 10 people – including a baby born during the pandemic – across multiple buildings. Day-to-day life was largely unaffected, but pandemic movement restrictions did have a big impact. Typically, some residents would rotate to other communities; “in normal times, if you’re really not fitting in anymore, then you can decide to leave,” says von Leoprechting. Tensions set in around shared versus individual space; some residents were seen as treating communal space as private and were asked to leave. They weren’t able to until the restrictions eased, however, and the community spirit suffered.

The community’s size generally fluctuates as people cycle in and out, and Obenaus is currently down to two residents; the families that had been planning to leave before lockdown have now done so. Obenaus’ humans (now outnumbered by sheep) have had to tighten their belts to make up for the lost income from guest stays and reflective/life coaching workshops, although they’ve been able to move some offerings online.

But the community has long embraced digital connectivity, even encouraging digital nomads to settle there. These tend to be relatively transient people in their 20s through 40s, such as the Peruvian Twitch streamer who stayed for three months. Visiting is a lesser commitment not just in time, but also in money. There’s a suggested donation of €30/day for visitors, compared to a suggested €50,000 investment for permanent community members. (In general, costs remain a barrier to diversifying the intentional community movement, which tends to be white and middle-class.)

Von Leoprechting believes that theirs is a more pragmatic version of communal life than an off-the-grid option – and is confident that in the long run the pandemic will have made such lifestyles more attractive. “You have community lifestyles, you have rural workplaces, and you have good internet. This sort of makes your life possible in much more relaxed and healthy surroundings,” he says.

Unlike Obenaus, Pacific Gardens’ population has remained relatively stable since the start of the pandemic. Its approximately 50 residents, ranging in age from 2 to 80, live in privately-owned apartments. Their complex is close to downtown Nanaimo, a city in British Columbia, but surrounded by forest. They share a common house, which has a dining hall, playroom and other facilities, and they make joint decisions about budgets and other matters.

There’s a real mix of occupations at Pacific Gardens, including entrepreneurs, IT workers, home-schoolers, tradespeople and retirees. The mixed, multigenerational nature is important to the community, which works toward personal, communal and environmental improvement.

During the pandemic, the community has been prioritising the needs of elderly residents and working families, for example allowing young families with parents working remotely to take over some common spaces, such as the music room, to use as offices. They also initially held weekly meetings to decide on their pandemic response. “We felt it was important to develop a cohesive response and to reassure people, because there was a whole spectrum of attitudes toward Covid: the people who felt they were invincible, and then the people who were really, really worried about what could happen to them. And we had to try and find a balance and meet everyone’s needs,” says Kathryn-Jane Hazel, a former journalist, who has lived in Pacific Gardens since co-founding it in 2009.   

The community set up a buddy system – Hazel is paired up with a couple she regularly meets for dinner – and a daily disinfecting round as well as developing protocols for visits from outsiders and moving large community meetings online. Where tensions arose, says Hazel, they were around miscommunication, such as regarding who was responsible for disinfecting a particular space. She stresses the importance of communication to a smooth-running community. Conflicts that have arisen are resolved through discussion; if a person isn’t satisfied with a decision, the onus is on them to come up with a solution within a set amount of time.

For Hazel, the pandemic has reinforced the value of community membership. She believes that many people are realising, “I don’t have to commute, I can just do this from home. Maybe I can live in a place where it’s less crowded and… I’ve got access to the outdoors, and a smaller community that’s more cohesive. And they’re looking into it. I think we’ve benefitted from that trend.”

Scotland: An enormous eco-community

“It was like a ghost village. I mean, just incredibly sad” to see Findhorn empty of visitors during lockdown, says Simon Steadman, the chief financial officer for the Findhorn Foundation.

Findhorn is among the world’s best-known intentional communities. The spiritually focused community, which has been going for almost 60 years in rural Scotland, has more than 500 residents and 80 staff members living in a variety of eco-homes and a Victorian former hotel.

Overall, the community has been fairly light-touch about enforcing Covid-19 regulations. Scotland had a strict lockdown, and within the community “there’s been very little need to say anything other than ‘follow the rules’”, according to Steadman. The sites include open spaces, so it was never an option for them to close, but visitors were asked to respect public health guidance. Community spaces such as the Universal Hall, an entertainment venue, were closed, and members were reminded to wear masks in the community shop.

Early in the pandemic, a Covid-19 community action group began meeting weekly to resolve issues and establish care for members in need. Communication has continued online, through the community’s magazine, in small groups, and – in one throwback – town criers who strolled through the community announcing news. The aim was to add some fun and connection. In general, most community members work from home, and logistical issues haven’t really arisen.

The main impact has been financial. Pre-pandemic, 85% of the foundation’s income came from guest programmes; normally some 2,000 guests would visit each year to tour the facilities or experience a week of community life. With these shut down, the financial loss has been acute. They’ve since received government grants, loans and donations – including from some community members. (Unlike some other communities, Findhorn residents don’t pool their income or have joint financial obligations.) Unfortunately, about 30 of the 80 staff members will lose their jobs, says Steadman. “What it has highlighted is… our over-reliance on bringing people to run residential courses,” he acknowledges. “What it’s done is accelerated what we knew we needed to do for a long time, which was to engage much more online with a worldwide community.”

This has already begun. The community has started offering online events including meditation and virtual walks. It has also become more connected locally; without large numbers of visitors, the organic gardens produced more food than could be consumed onsite, so the surplus was given to food banks outside the community. Findhorn has also developed gardening training for local people with disabilities.

Caroline Matters, CEO of the Findhorn Foundation, feels fortunate; she believes the pandemic has highlighted the benefits of their natural environment, while Covid-19’s challenges have brought a renewed sense of mission. “There’s been an opportunity, actually, for how the spiritual community connects.”