Scenic creek flowing through lush green forest near Clearwater Commons.

Clearwater Commons

  • Communities

About the Communities

  • Established
  • Ecological
  • Suburban

Founding year

  • 2006

What we do

Clearwater Commons is an intergenerational residential community, with participants ranging from small children to elders. We began forming in June 2006 when a group of families purchased a 7.4-acre site on North Creek, 11 miles north of the Seattle, Washington, city limits. The site includes wetlands, wooded spaces, and a salmon stream. As of December 2020 all 16 homes are completed and occupied, a common shop, art studio, shed, garden and a 300sf passive guest house (currently rented).
The physical design of the community represents our underlying values of community and low-impact development. Pedestrian walkways, community gardens, benches, shared shop, tool and storage sheds, and play spaces reflect our desire to interact with neighbors through the natural course of our days.
The inspiration for this community grew from founding members’ involvement in The Clearwater School, located across the street. Our shared experience with the school encourages us to allow the structures for community meetings, gatherings, and events to evolve through our daily interactions, rather than follow a preset or mandated framework.
We take on a responsibility to act as stewards of our land—-restoring and enhancing the natural environment, including the stream, wetlands, habitat, and wildlife. We value relationships between individuals, families, and our environment, and promote a lifestyle that will sustain these relationships. We trust each family to make decisions that are aligned with our intent of sustainability and that balance individual autonomy and community needs. We expect that the specific commitments of our community will change over time, and we wish to avoid hard and fast rules. We value communication and discussion and take the time needed to voice, discuss, and understand diverse perspectives in order to reach informed and conscious decisions.

Our Mission

We share an intention of living a lifestyle that sustains a balance between individual and community needs and the natural ecosystem.

  • Purpose
  • Ecological
  • Community type
  • Cohousing
  • Ecovillage
  • Activities
  • Property management

Commemorative dates

  • January 1, 2006
  • Started planning
  • January 1, 2012
  • Started living together

Gallery

  • 26 Total members
  • Not open to new members
  • Open to visitors
Total
39

Basic expectations or agreements for members

Email or phone and request a visit to see our property.

Primary decision-making authority

  • All Community Members Together

The whole membership decides collectively.

Decision-making process

  • Consent-Based (Sociocracy)

Decisions proceed unless someone has a reasoned objection.

Governance structure

  • Sociocratic/Circle-Based

Organized in circles or domains with distributed authority.

Conflict resolution approach

We strive for consent, allowing time to understand all points of view. Use majority rule rarely if complete agreement is not possible. Individuals or committees take on specific tasks as needed.

Economic model

  • Independent Finances

Members maintain separate personal finances with minimal sharing.

Economic scenarios for this community

  • Members need to pay fees, dues, or similar to live there on a per month or per year basis
  • There is a labor obligation
  • Members typically need to have their own job or other personal source of income to cover their expenses while living in the community?

Additional economic information

Regular fees: $100
Labor: Encouraged or suggested (0 hrs/week)
Members with pre-existing debt: allowed
We expect members to contribute depending on their interests, skills and time. We anticipate specific commitments to change over time and do not prescribe specific time commitments by members.
Homeowners dues are to cover the cost of commons areas (garden, parking, landscaping, stream) and buildings (workshop, shed, guesthouse).

Shared resources and amenities that are accessible to everyone in the community

Garden(s), Greenhouse(s), Workshop, Outbuilding(s), Tractor & Farm Equipment, Stage or Auditorium, Fire pit, Swingsets & play areas, Waterfront access, Internet

Frequency of communal meals

  • 1-3 times per month

Significant food acquisition practices

  • Locally sourced

Community activities and engagement

  • Neighborhood, Community Housing, or Homeowner's Association

Substance use culture

  • Substance use appears in public spaces but no pressure
  • Substance use occurs primarily at celebrations or ceremonies
  • Religions
  • Christian
  • Buddhist
  • Jewish
  • Muslim
  • Hindu

Gender composition

  • Roughly balanced (no group over 60%)

Age demographics

  • Family-focused (many children and parents)

Property status

  • Privately owned

Property owner

  • By a single individual, couple, or Family Trust

Setting

  • Suburban

Residential areas outside city centers but within metropolitan regions.

Community type

  • Cohousing

    Private homes with shared common facilities, designed for neighborly
    interaction while maintaining independence.

  • Ecovillage

    Integrated communities designed around ecological principles with sustainable living practices.

Self-produced energy

  • 33 - 66%

Energy sources used

  • Photovoltaic Solar

Self-produced food

  • Up to 33%

Local, organic, or fair trade food

  • 33 - 66%

Food systems

  • Community garden
  • Greenhouse / aquaponics
  • Land area size
    7.4 acres

Guest Book

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Location

  • Washington, United States

Clearwater Commons

Needs and Offers

Connecting people and communities through an intentional online marketplace

Offer
Offer
  • Real Estate For Sale
5 days ago

Co-housing Unit For Sale in Portland Oregon

Light-filled 976 sq ft, 3-bedroom, 1-bath end unit in Columbia Ecovillage, Portland’sestablished cohousing community in the Cully neighborhood. With windows onthree sides, this ground-floor home gets natural light all day, even onPortland’s grey ones. The open living and dining area has warm hardwood floors and flows into akitchen with solid wood cabinets and granite counters. The dining roomwindows look straight into a native vine maple — a wall of green from springthrough fall. There’s good storagein the unit, plus an extra storage space in the community storage building.A ductless mini-split provides efficient heating and air conditioning, andthe plumbing was fully replaced in 2026. The primary bedroom has a full-width closet behind a sliding barn door; thesecond bedroom’s closet sits behind a pair of French doors. The thirdbedroom has no closet, which makes it a flexible room — guest room, office,or playroom. Step out the sliding glass door onto your own covered patio, which opens onto the community grounds: organic gardens, personal garden plots,greenhouses, a grape arbor, a bamboo grove, native plantings throughout, andtrees everywhere — including a truly massive old black walnut. The orchard alone is a reason to live here — to name a few:apples, pears, plums, figs, mulberries, chestnuts, walnuts, grapes,blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, in several varieties each. A75,000-gallon rainwater catchment system keeps it all watered through thesummer. Kids have a playhouse, sandbox, small soccer field, a favorite climbingtree, and a parking loop where bikes can circle but cars can’t; adults havea workshop, garden shed, fire pit, quiet space and big community porches. The common hall is the heart of the village: a commercial kitchen anyresident can use, a kids’ play area, pool table and ping pong, and asoapstone stove that burns every winter evening. Residents can reserve it forevents for almost nothing. The historic farmhouse has guest rooms owners canbook for visiting family (about 30 nights a year). Shared laundry rooms(three washers and dryers) come with indoor drying racks and outdoorclotheslines, and there’s a craft room and a trade room where things you nolonger need find a new home next door. Potlucks, communitymeals, work parties, and acres of safe space for kids to roam makethis a rare chance to own a home and a neighborhood at the same time. Built in 1973 and fully remodeled in 2008–09 for energy efficiency and healthy indoor air — metal roof, HardiePlank siding, and standard community-built finishes throughout. Nothing to update, nothing deferred. The $522 monthly HOA coverswater, sewer, and garbage, plus the roof, siding, exterior paint, and allstructural maintenance — and it’s what pays for the grounds, the common hall,and everything else described above. And it’s close in: Cully’s cafés andparks are a short walk or bike ride away, the rest of Portland’s food,music, and neighborhoods are minutes beyond that, and the commute downtownor to the airport is easy by car, bus, or bike – 3.7-acre grounds with organic gardens, personal plots, greenhouses, native plantings, and mature trees (huge black walnut)- Orchard: apples, pears, plums, figs, mulberries, chestnuts, walnuts, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries- 75,000-gallon rainwater catchment feeds the gardens year-round- Workshop, garden shed, fire pit, quiet space, community porches  
Need
  • Forming Communities
3 weeks ago

Looking for: people building relational capacity, with a view to community

What’s here now: An intention, a framework developed over five years, and a programme running in central Victoria to find people to build with. No land, no group, no timeline. The question this is organised around: What makes a community of people living together sustainable over decades – where people enjoy being there, conflict is low, and the conflict that does arise gets handled in ways people value. The distinctive premise is capacity before formation. Most communities form first and build relational skill afterwards, usually under pressure. This one proposes doing it the other way round: people build the capacities first, and the group forms from people who have them. That includes a working idea about collective capacity – that a group has a ratio, and below some threshold it can’t metabolise its own conflict and starts consuming itself. Roughly: in a group of twenty, perhaps three or four with high capacity, most in the middle, and very few without. Untested, and something this project exists to find out. Governance: Sociocracy, with the intention of testing it meaningfully at scale rather than adopting it nominally. What’s actually happening: A three-week residency at a property near Castlemaine, and a practice group running before it. The medium-term aim is twenty to forty people at a rented facility. The long-term aim is a support hub sharing the framework more widely. What I’m looking for: People who want to build this capacity seriously, and who might eventually want to build something together. Not necessarily people who want to live here – the current property probably isn’t the long-term site. Happy to hear from anyone this resonates with, including people already in community who’d rather share what they’ve learned than join anything.
Need

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A residential project: people live here as their primary home.

Organizations

An institution, business, network, or project that isn’t a residence (e.g. a learning center, farm, or network with no one living there full-time).

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