Debt-free — and why that's the whole point

A century ago, in this exact valley, a commons like ours was lost to mortgage foreclosure. We don't repeat that mistake.

The Doukhobor lesson

The Doukhobors built almost exactly this — a communal land commons in the Kootenay valley — a century ago. They lost it all to mortgage foreclosure in the 1930s. When the loan came due and the bank called it, the commons was gone.

So our first rule is the hardest one: we buy debt-free. No mortgage means there is nothing for a bank to ever foreclose. We grow by buying neighbouring land with cash, cohort by cohort, never on borrowed money.

What that demands of us

It means we grow slower and we raise the buy-in honestly, from members, into a lawyer's trust account — never a personal account, and only when a land deal is firm. Patience is the price of permanence.

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