Commons Restoration (CORE)

We envision a world in which people come together in collective stewardship of the spaces where we shelter ourselves, grow food, and gather in stable, loving communities.

We recognize the ancestral wisdom traditions of many diverse groups of people around the world who have cared collectively for their homelands and thrived for generations in harmony with the earth and each other.

We strive to restore the commons through innovating cultural practices appropriate to our modern times, which will allow us to sustain long-term community & environmental health.

Within the Commons Restoration Land Trust Initiative, we aim to develop a model for affordable housing, neighborhood food production, and cooperative living, which provides for enduring housing & food security as well as neighborhood stabilization.

In this way, we intend to address and eliminate the fears and mechanisms that drive land speculation and the individual accumulation of wealth, which prevent resources from flowing toward ensuring everyone’s needs are met. We honor the truth that stable housing, wholesome food, and supportive relationships are basic needs that provide people with a foundation of health and well-being to help them thrive in all areas of their lives.

Pomona Community Farmer Housing Cooperative

We are currently incubating a project intended to establish a community land trust to provide permanent affordable housing and cultivation space to the community farmers who have been growing food for our local Pomona Community. Our current project proposes to develop just over 1 acre of vacant land into 5-8 superadobe housing units, ¾ acre chemical free growing space, and 1 community center. We are actively working with community partners to secure funds and acquire land for this project.

Dulzura Village

In 2024, we partnered to co-purchase 40 acres in unincorporated San Diego County to develop our Commons Restoration vision. Here we imagine building an intentional community and learning center, which centers regenerative living and establishes a culture of care. Over the next several years, we plan to build out a community scale working ecological farm, several demonstration kitchen & medicinal gardens, small scale food forests, an off-grid solar micro-grid, functional gray water and composting toilet demonstrations, animal pastures, earthen building structures, cooperative living spaces, tiny homes, and more! We also plan to restore chaparral and riparian habitats and establish land protections, such as through a community land trust or conservation easement.

We work using the following methods and principles:

We listen, share, explore possibility, and deepen knowledge as part of our co-creative process of community building and solution development.

We acknowledge that every team has strengths and limitations. We celebrate and honor our strengths and interests by orienting our work towards our existing capacities. We acknowledge our personal and collective limitations. We support one another in stretching our current capacities and we do not embark on work that relies heavily on areas where our existing team has limited capacity or interest in growth.

When immediate solutions cannot be implemented or cause more harm than good, we accept gradual solutions that promote shifts towards greater equity, even if these cannot be perfect solutions--we do not sacrifice the good for the perfect. We strive for growth and systems change, but recognize that we have finite capacity. Additional time, resources, and/or collaborators may be needed in order to respond to particular critiques or gaps in our work.

Our Active Objectives are:

Establish founding Commons Restoration Community in Pomona
Develop plain speech contracts for:
- Collaborative land acquisition
- Private property to land trust transitions
- Stewardship & shelter lease agreements
Pilot co-housing agreement development process
Cultivate organizational homes/relationships for/with Land Trust Holders and Stewardship & Shelter Lease Holders

Subsequent Objectives include:

Replicate model for 2 independently owned homes (establishing landlord-tenant to land trust transition model)
Develop food production system on site at Pomona site
Build out necessary infrastructure at Pomona site
Call in additional collaborators (Pomona and CORE)
Translate plain speech contracts to Spanish
Publish pilot processes and share