The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast
A show that explores how land, capital, and community come together in practice.
Featuring conversations with landowners, developers, investors, and practitioners navigating the real-world challenges of regenerative development, including financing, governance, land stewardship, and long-term value creation.
Rather than focusing on theory or trends, the podcast examines the tradeoffs, constraints, and decisions that determine whether regenerative projects actually endure.
Hosted by Neal Collins with support from Hamlet Capital and Latitude.
The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast
Agrivillage co-housing community creation through farmland conservation with Katie McCamant and Dave Boehnlein
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In this episode, we explore the inspiring story of Rooted Northwest, an agrivillage in Arlington, Washington that is transforming a former dairy farm into a thriving co-housing community. With over 85% of the land conserved as pastures and forests, Rooted Northwest weaves together two villages and a collectively managed regenerative farm.
Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring a visionary project like this to life—from assembling co-founders and shaping new county codes, to creating a supportive framework for farmers stewarding the land.
We’re joined by returning guest Katie McCamant, a pioneering co-housing leader and development consultant who helped introduce the concept to the U.S., alongside Rooted NW co-founder and permaculturalist Dave Boehnlein.
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The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast is an independent show exploring the people, projects, and capital reshaping how land gets used and communities get built. Two organizations grew directly out of this work, and they're worth knowing:
Hamlet Capital finances and advises on projects that integrate agriculture and conservation with mixed-use development. If you're building one or looking to invest, let's talk.
Latitude is a real estate brokerage representing sanctuary properties rooted in nature, beauty, and meaningful living.
For most of us, the money we spend on our house, if we're, particularly if we're a home buyer, is really the most significant investment we make. And I'm always shocked at how little that is tied to people's values. There is this assumption that, you know, if we succeed, we have to have a single family house and, you know, take care of our family all by ourselves. And it just really is a silly way to live.
>> Neal Collins:Welcome to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, a show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate.
>> Katie McCamett:I'm Neal Collins, and on this episode.
>> Neal Collins:I'm joined by Dave Bodlein and Katie McCamett to talk about Rooted Northwest, an exciting new co housing agri village located in Washington state.
>> Katie McCamett:Before we dive in, I want to.
>> Neal Collins:Take you back to 1987, when the United nations released a document called Our Common Future, better known as the Brentland Report. It was the result of a massive multi year effort that pulled together insights from policymakers, scientists and academics worldwide to answer one big question. How do we build a future that works for both people and the planet? This report gave us the now famous definition of sustainable development, meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations. But fast forward to today, and it feels like sustainable just isn't enough. More and more people are waking up to the fact that we need to move beyond sustaining what is and instead focus on restoring, revitalizing and regenerating the world around us. The Brentland Report also framed sustainable living as urban living, and for decades, that's been the Trend. In the 1950s, about 1/3 of the world's population lived in cities. Today, it's over half. And projections say that by 2050, nearly 70% of the global population will call a city a home. And yet, despite the shift towards dense urban life, many people are feeling something is missing. There's this growing sense of disconnection from nature, from community, from purpose. That's why for some, the answer is to step away from the city life and move towards forest farms and open landscapes. They're looking for deeper connection, healthier food, meaningful community, and a life more in tune with the rhythms of the land.
>> Katie McCamett:So there it is.
>> Neal Collins:That's the backdrop for today's conversation with Katie and Dave. Together, they've been working on Rooted Northwest, a visionary agri village just north of Seattle in the charming town of Arlington. The project is transforming a former 240 acre dairy farm, complete with rolling pastures and forests at the base of the Cascade Mountains into a regenerative community where two co housing villages and a collective of small farms are taking root. Katie and Dave share the inside story of how they've navigated everything from land use hurdles to the challenges of building community through a global pandemic, all while keeping their eyes on the bigger goal, creating a place where people and nature can thrive together. If you're interested in agri villages, conservation communities, co housing and regenerative development, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. So without further ado, let's get into it.
>> Katie McCamett:Foreign Katie, you've actually been on the show before. I was looking at our stats and it looks like co housing is one of the, the more popular subjects of the podcast. I think the episode that we did several years ago is in like the top five episodes that we've launched. So you're that five years running. You're in the top five with several. I think we're up to like 125 interviews now, so that's amazing to have you return. And Dave, you're, you're a newcomer to the podcast, which is why I'm first going to give you the, the introduction kickoff.
>> Dave Bodlein:So my name is Dave Bainline and I am a permaculture designer and educator. Early 2000s, I was traveling around in Central America and I stumbled upon this idea of permaculture design as an approach to how to, get people to take a design forward, take on how to live sustainably, how to produce your own energy, manage your own waste, grow your own food, deal, with livestock, build houses that are responsive to the environment, all that sort of stuff. So that was the initial exposure in the early 2000s, 2005, I said I need to really get some on the ground experience with this. So I headed out to Orcas island to the Bullock's permaculture homestead, where I ended up living for seven years. I served as their education director, their interim program coordinator. Many other hats were worn during that time, and that was during that time that Doug, Bullock, Paul Kearsley and I started a company called Terra Phoenix Design to help other people figure out how to lay out their properties, how to set things up so that they have the stage, set for sustainability. In 2011, I moved down to Seattle and was practicing urban permaculture stuff. we lived in an apartment. We totally deck that out permaculture style. But, you can only go so far there. Right? During that time we were running the company, I worked with Another permaculturist here in the Pacific Northwest named Jesse Bloom. We wrote a book called Practical Permaculture, which is sort of a design manual. it's very entry level basic for people to get an understanding of what's going on with permaculture. And then living in this apartment in Seattle, I came upon the understanding that if I want to, you know, achieve bigger things, grow bigger trees, chestnuts, then I can't do that in an apartment in South Seattle. So that was in 2015. I sat down with Ed Jazierski, who is one of the other co founders of Rooted Northwest, and we came up with this crazy idea like, what if we went out and tried to save farmland and also create a place where we can live and steward that land and invite others who want to do that sort of thing in. And really a big inspiration there was the experience I had while living at the Bullocks was a community living experience. And then the experience that I was comparing that against was living in an apartment in Seattle. And those are two radically different things. And I was like, you know what? I want to be able to live in community again in the more grown up, not living on a tent platform version. Right. And I want to be able to offer that experience to other people because I think there is a sort of lifestyle and a way of interacting with the world around us and interacting with each other that you only get from that kind of experience.
>> Katie McCamett:Katie, I'd love to do a refresher for the audience around your background and everything that you've been doing in the co housing movement.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, well, I've been doing co housing forever. I think my claim to fame is I'm the co author of the book that introduced co housing to the English speaking world after, studying coming across it as a young architecture student in Denmark. And it just, you know, caught me both personally and professionally as I looked around. It's like, well, this is the kind of way, this is the way I want to raise my kids. I how do people do it otherwise? You got to create community. So I, you know, first started as an architect, then founded a development company that partnered with co housing groups and now work as a, development consultant with co housing communities all across the country and Canada on, you know, how do you actually get these communities built? And I've lived in as a homeowner in two communities myself. one in Doyle, Street co housing in the heart of the San Francisco Bay area and now in Nevada City co housing, which is a community I founded, about 20 years ago.
>> Katie McCamett:What's the, what's the elevator pitch that you like to give for the modern definition of a co housing, Katie?
>> Speaker A:Well, I think of co housing as a, collaborative neighborhood where you have your own individual home, you know, whether that's a studio or a one bedroom or a four bedroom house, plus common facilities, with the intent of really working with your neighbors. So, you know, I think that's really the, the big difference is we actually, the people who move into co housing intend to actually have a relationship with their neighbors, you know, on running the community, on growing the gardens. And we all bring our skills and participation to that. And we all have very individual lives. We're not trying to earn a living together. For me, one of the things that co housing provides is first a balance of community and privacy. And I can choose and adapt, given my mode and need of the day, but also a way that I find support that allows me to go out into the world and be a more powerful person in the world. And for me that's very, very important that we are activ. In our democracy, in our towns and our schools, not trying to do something totally separate outside of that.
>> Katie McCamett:And would you identify more as an architect or a developer or consultant? What does your role look like right now within the greater movement?
>> Speaker A:Well, I think as a development consultant, but you know, once you've been a developer and you've had, you know, your money on the line and you've signed on the loans and, you know, I really feel like I got my PhD, in real estate development in the Great Recession. I've ridden the ups and the downs and I pretty much, I've been in the trenches on all of it. So I don't think I can ever go back to really being an architect anymore. I think I, I see other, you know, the money really drives everything and understanding that I think is critical to building anything different than what's getting built out there regularly. So.
>> Katie McCamett:Yeah, well, this is really fun ingredients. This is going to be a different show format. We, have a development consultant on one hand and the permaculturalist on the other. Both, talking about ways in which we can live in community and more in relationship with the land and stewardship. This is going to be different because this isn't just about your backgrounds and the work that you're doing in the world, but it is very specific towards one particular project located in Arlington, Washington on a beautiful piece of property with a project called Rooted Northwest and this is where I think we have the opportunity to pick up your story, Dave. And, and you had mentioned it. Was you and a guy named Ed really thinking about how can you create community and save farmland at the same time? Can we go deeper into the, the roots of this story and the project and how you actually decided on co housing and, and Katie came into the project.
>> Dave Bodlein:Okay. Yeah. So one correction I would make is, you know, I mentioned I had the meeting with Ed, but, Ed and I both have partners as well who are, you know, equal contributors to the co founding effort here. So there was four of us on the original team, right. And in effect, Ed and his partner Elena had been clients of mine for Permaculture Design Services. And, Ed sat down with me one day, we had coffee and said, you know, we're thinking we'd like to do something more community focused, something that actually is sort of built with the right pieces from the ground up. People, are ready to interact, all pointing in the same direction in terms of the bigger goal and the values and things like that. What do you think? You know, would you like to join us and launch something like this? I thought about it and I said, well, I got nothing else to do for the next 10 years, so why not? I figured the worst case scenario is I get a crash course in eco village design. Right. So the first thing we did was not start looking for land. The first thing we did was also not go find a bunch of people. The first thing we did was we sat down as four of us and spent a bunch of time together trying to clarify what's important to us, what are our shared values, what is the project about? What do we want this project to do? And so I think that was actually a real hallmark of our success, was we didn't try to do that with 50 people. We did that with four people. We got really clear about it before we started ringing the bell to attract people that way. We were attracting people to something that was much more concrete, much more directed, as opposed to just a vaguer notion of, well, I want community or I want farmland preservation. We also spent, I think it was almost a year and a half in our, in our free time just going and looking at other communities. We were pretty adamant that we didn't want to just make the same mistakes that everybody who's tried to do any sort of community for all of time has made. Right. You know, if we look back to the, back to the land movement in the 60s and 70s, like how many of those, how Many of those communities are still around. Like there's a handful, right. But there are a lot of them that aren't. And if we look at you, know, who is it? I think Diana Leaf Christian talks about a 90% fail rate in terms of people trying to start community, projects. So we figured, you know what, if we're going to fail, let's fail for a totally new reason. Let's not fail for a reason that people have already done over and over and over. So we spent a year and a half visiting sites, talking to founders, talking to people who are in community in order to try and get a better understanding of what the patterns of success are. So that's a very permacultural approach to things. Let's look at patterns and a patterns focused approach to how we do this. Then we started looking for land. Then we started to try and accrue, ah, a group of people who had a shared vision. It was right about that time as we were gathering people in like a city park down in Seattle to just, you know, talk to them about the project, see who's interested in being a part of this. I believe that's when two of our early, early folks, Ed and Pear, went to a conference and ran into Katie. And I'm pretty sure that's where Katie enters the picture and where of all the different ways you could attempt to make a community happening happen, co housing came to the floor as the approach we wanted to take.
>> Katie McCamett:Katie, is this the first co housing project that you've worked on that specifically was targeted to create community around a working farm?
>> Speaker A:It's the first one I've been deeply involved in and now I actually am also involved in another smaller one in Tennessee. But again, this agri village idea to cluster your housing so that you can save the farmland.
>> Katie McCamett:Interesting. Yeah. And I do think that is a theme that is coming up more and more. Did you have the property in hand, Dave, already by the time that you approached Katie with this cohousing idea or.
>> Dave Bodlein:Yeah, no, we were still looking for land. We were doing sort of a brute force process of going through county by county and just sort of scanning through the parcel searcher and looking for appropriate pieces of real estate. Right. So we were looking for things that were farmland. Right. Trying to preserve farmland was a primary goal from the very early stages. So if somebody, you know, a real estate agent might send us something, it's like, look at this amazing two acre parcel. And it's like, that doesn't sound like a Big farm. And, or we'd get something like, here, look, it's 60 acres of industrial forest land. And it'd be like, that's also not what we're talking about. And so we, we stumbled upon this farm, which is almost 240 acres here in Arlington. It wasn't on the market and we approached the owner and had a conversation. And essentially, the reason that we really honed in on this one is that it's a big, beautiful open piece of land and the whole thing was zoned R5, which means here in Snohomish county, residential five acre, which means one house per five acres. So it's very easy to see what the future of this land was going to be, if someone didn't intervene. Right. Its value to a developer would be much higher than its value to another farmer. In other words, its market value is going to be based upon its value, for development, which means a farmer is not going to be able to afford it, which means the only person who's going to buy it is a developer. And we said, well, what if we get in, what if we get in the mix? What if we sort of insert ourselves between a conventional developer and what's happening right now and see if we can save this farm and see if we can flip it into a regenerative ag model and still put houses here for people who want to steward land.
>> Katie McCamett:And so how did that go? I mean, is that a normal conversation with, buyer and seller of real estate, or was it more interpersonal and having to work with the seller and talk about the vision and, and what you wanted to do there?
>> Dave Bodlein:I think for many farmers it would be really appealing to know that the people taking over have every intention of preserving the farmland. This is going to continue. You know, your legacy of building soil, your legacy of stewarding this land is going to continue as opposed to selling it to a conventional developer. Where's it going to go? We know exactly where it's going to go. It's going to, you know, turn into big acreage, lots and lawns and things like that.
>> Katie McCamett:One of the things that I hear a lot of people and I, want, to kind of push back on this is they think I'm going to come up with this great vision of a community and we're going to save farmland and the seller is just going to give it to us.
>> Dave Bodlein:Not only is that not how things work, but it's not. Even if we think about the larger economic picture, it's not how things should Work. Right. If we think most farmers are land rich, cash poor. Right. you've heard that before. I mean, I think that's really how it is. And if you're saying, well, give me the farm, give me the farm, it's just like, so why do you want this farmer to be destitute or never be able to retire or you know, all those sorts of things. So if they're, if they're like total wealth and value is tied up in their land in our current system, right. This is, we live in a capitalist system. They're going to have to have care when they're older, all that sort of stuff, I think it's right to pay them a fair price. Right. They're all the work they've invested as stewards of land is something that it only gets reflected as the value of that land according to development standards right now. Right. We would like to see that happen differently, but that's the reality of the world right now.
>> Katie McCamett:So there's two things that I want to go in the direction of concurrently, but I want to set the stage for people that are unfamiliar with the, Puget Sound in Washington State. Arlington is located almost an hour north of downtown Seattle. So it is very close proximity wise, but it still feels like you're right in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It is a beautiful region. It's on the way, north toward the Canadian border in the San Juan Islands where Dave, you said that you'd spend a lot of time on, on Orcas Island. It is a stunning region, very rich in its agricultural history. So you've identified the land. 1. I, I want to go back to what that, that vision looked like at that time. What, what did you see between, you know, we want to live in community, and we want to have a farming aspect. And then how do you actually take those tangible steps forward? Assuming that it comes with a purchase price with several zeros behind it because it is a large piece of property, how do you begin to move in that direction?
>> Dave Bodlein:For for me the process was, you know, it, it shared something in common with when I wrote the book. When I wrote the book, someone told me what you should be doing is you should have like, who you're writing this book for. Create someone, create a fantasy person that is your person you're writing this book for. Right. And that way every time you're writing you're like, does this speak to the fantasy person that I created in my head who's like a stand in for who your future audience is? Going to be right. That happened here, too. Who are we creating this for? Right? And I was literally thinking like, hey, when I lived at the farm, we had all these amazing young people who were skilled and driven and totally ready to roll with the punches. Resilient people, right? These are the kinds of people who are like, I can live in a tent for the next nine months. It's cool, you know, just real go getters. But when you leave the farm, you also go back into the regular world and you don't have community and you're not sharing meals with people, probably, and you're not biking down to the Sound and jumping into the bioluminescent water, in a summer night. And you're not doing all these things anymore, right? And I'm like, so many of those things are such quality of life improvements. How can I create a place where people like that can land people who want that community experience, people who, have those skills and would be great community participants. So that was a huge driver in terms of, like, how we were trying to, you know, who we were aiming for and how we're trying to find it. Was there a second piece to your question?
>> Katie McCamett:There was, yeah. How do you go out and get the money to actually finance the purchase of farmland so that you can tee up the development?
>> Dave Bodlein:Right. So tires have to hit the road. Right. Step one, you have to be able to buy the land. We, we worked with a mixture of private investors who were passionate about the vision and a bank loan in order to be able to buy the land. All of those initial investors intend to live here and are, you know, again, enthusiastic about stewarding this land, living on this land and helping preserve it. That was the initial land purchase piece of it. And then as we move forward, Katie, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but we're financing it as we go. Right? Next step is to get some architectural drawings. We're looking for more people. And as people come on board, they come on board not just in name, but they come on board in, when we pass around the hat to pay the architect or pay the civil engineer or pay the permitting fee or whatever it is. And so for us, as we continue to accrue, more and more people, it gives us a stronger and stronger and stronger ability to take the next step in the process up until the point where we'll eventually be able to get a construction loan and move forward with building homes, which then become, you know, people's mortgages, take over, pay back that construction loan and the money They've paid in to date counts towards their down payment.
>> Speaker A:If I could jump in there. I think that's the real lesson from co housing. If you want to build something different, you need to be able to prove that there are real buyers who can actually afford it, who want to buy that. If you can prove that, then everything else is possible. I got something I can take to the bank. Somebody coming up with a brilliant idea of a utopia but no buyers is a, kind of recipe for disaster. And many an architect has designed a utopia that nobody else wanted to buy into. And so this is what I really learned with cohousing is you had to be able to prove you had real buyers and they had to be willing to put their money in first. Oh yeah, let me know what's happening. Keep me posted. And somebody else is funding it does not get projects built. What gets projects built is when people really make a financial commitment that is I can't afford the 240 acres but I can commit to buying a house there. And that identifying those buyers is what allows me as the development consultant to find development partners, to find construction lenders and ultimately mortgages to support people buying into it. It's because we can prove there are real people that can afford it, that want to pay and are using, you know, their money to really back their values and say I want something different than what the development world is providing.
>> Katie McCamett:In your experience and not just on rooted northwest, but what is the best way to go out and find those people and how much money are they coming in with?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, well as Dave said, with every co housing community it's the future buyers group that needs to fund the site purchase and then the pre development cost and you know, any given project, you know that's million dollars plus or minus, then you need the equity for construction loans. So at the start of construction is when you really need a large group to commit. You know, at the start of construction I'm looking for 75% of the homes have committed buyers who have put in 20% of their house price. And then with that, you know, you may still need a little bit more money but with that you can find it and you can find a construction loan because you really show on skin in the game. Not money sitting in escrow, but people that are really financially committed. And I think what I've seen, you know, we just went through a really rough time and you know, rooted was very much part of this through the whole pandemic. They tied up the land, got it under contract in September 2019. I was there. I got to go have beers with them. It was very exciting. and then. But then, you know, we had a kickoff workshop in early 2020, and then, bam, that was the last time we saw each other in person for quite a while. And so that, you know, the pandemic was so difficult. you know, and much to everybody's surprise, cost really went up. Everything slowed down. It was. And so, you know, having a group that hangs through that, that gets through that is, you know, I think what really makes a big difference. And it's that both building the relationships with each other and that financial commitment, you know, I think it just really makes a big difference when you put your own money in a deal.
>> Katie McCamett:Absolutely. What is it like to actually not just weather through a, turbulent social period like Covid and increasing costs, but to actually get this thing entitled? Because now you've got to work with a municipality that is probably unfamiliar with agrihoods, and you want to do a little bit more density and then than other rural areas. What does that look like?
>> Dave Bodlein:Number one, I'm super happy that this moved forward in Snohomish county, because I have no idea how we would have been received in another county. But in effect, they have what's called a pre app process. And the idea is you can put in some materials before you go through a formal application and pay all the fees and all that, and they'll take a look at them and let you know what they think. Right. So we put in this pre app for this, you know, agri village concept, and, you know, they passed it around the planning department, and they all looked at it, then came back to us, and the messaging was basically like, this is awesome. This is totally great. I have no way to say yes to it, but it's totally great. Good on you. So super supportive, but not able. Like, there was no code that says, yes, you can do this. Right? So that's where the. That's where we actually had a big slowdown was Snohomish county figuring out how we could go about this, how to make this happen. Right? Everybody liked the idea. Everybody. Like, there is no one out there who's like, you know what sucks? Preserving farmland. Let's not do that anymore. Right? That's not a sentiment that anybody makes. So everybody was on board with this idea of farmland preservation. It took a long time to figure out the how and what. The how ended up being was what's called the rural village housing demonstration program, which is now part of Snohomish county code, what it did was it opened up a window in order for us to be able to basically the, the big thesis of what it allowed is allowed us to super cluster things, right? There's already a rural cluster code. We explored using that. But because there's still setbacks and minimum lot sizes and clusters can't be more than 13 homes and all that jazz, it still would have eaten up a vast quantity of farmland. So what this code allows is number one, it allows townhomes, and number two, it allows much tighter, much, much, tighter envelopes for the homes, which allows us to save much more land. and that piece of legislation that that ordinance is in place for, it, was a two year window for anybody who wants to use it. If you meet the criteria for the project, which means in a nutshell, you're dealing with a property that's over 100 acres, you're committing to saving 85% or more in farm and forestry, then you can use this different design modality for how you put the houses in. And the reason, since they only opened it up for two years, the idea is it's a test, right? They're going to see how it works. And if it works well, if this turns out to be a really excellent model for farmland preservation, then it could become part of the permanent code. But they took a really wise way of going about it and saying, let's check it out and see. Which also eliminates a lot of objections and barriers. So we're the, we're the first ones. I don't know, maybe before it closes, someone else will get in the mix, another developer will decide to do something like this. But for now, we're the ones taking a go at it and seeing where we get it.
>> Katie McCamett:Sounds like, Dave, you've got, a steep education in urban planning and municipal code. Oh yeah, that's a great eloquent way of bringing us through that process. How long did that take?
>> Dave Bodlein:Katie, you might remember better than me. I want to say it was almost two years of like two, two.
>> Speaker A:And a half years. I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, Covid hit and everything slowed down. So first of all, they had to figure out there was a, you know, we spent, probably a year and a half with the county trying to figure out how they actually wanted to do this. And finally they got clear about writing a new ordinances demonstration. But that took quite a while. And then, you know, I mean, counties take forever and everything. Construction slowed down in the world, approval slowed down in the world. I mean, the whole Covid thing, it's just amazing how it slowed everything down. But I think the really important thing with this is that we're basically taking exactly the same density that was already allowed on the property and would have eaten up the whole property with roads and stuff, and clustering it, in two villages so that you can save, you know, it's actually, they're saving, you know, well over 90% of the land as farmland and forest and what, in perpetuity.
>> Dave Bodlein:Right. Because once we, once we exercise those development rights, there's no more houses going anywhere. It's done. Right. And so I think that's the important thing for people to understand. This isn't putting, this isn't us getting an allowance to put more houses here. This is just allowing us to take the normal allotment of houses and tighter, tighten it up so that it saves more land.
>> Katie McCamett:Can, you go back to. Did you say 90% of the site is going to be preserved as open space, forest land and farm? That's pretty incredible.
>> Dave Bodlein:Yeah, I think according to the latest civil plans, and this could shift a little bit one direction or another. But I'm Pretty sure the two neighborhoods take up about 7 acres or something like that. It's super minimal out of 240ish acres total.
>> Speaker A:Yeah. All it does is attaching walls. Right. I mean, if you go to townhouses instead of detached homes. There are some detached homes, but just six of the village. One is 40 homes, six of those are detached. The others are all townhouses. And that also is better for energy. I mean, it's just if you want to reduce our impact on the world, attaching walls, reducing the amount of energy, reducing the amount of land. And you know, I live in a townhouse co housing community. You know, I don't hear my neighbors. you know, you're going to hear your neighbors through your open windows in a single family house development. Much more than attached townhomes. And so there's this weird fear around attached homes, which I find is really quite irrational.
>> Katie McCamett:tell me a little bit more about, about the.
>> Dave Bodlein:You've.
>> Katie McCamett:You just mentioned village one. So you introduced that for the first time. I know that there's actually two villages there. One of 40 homes, one of 30 homes. How did you come up with that number? How did they get laid out? Katie, were you the architect on it or was there another group that was involved in.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, no, Brian Bone of Caddis Studio in, Boulder, Colorado is the architect. He's done a lot of co housing communities. I'VE worked with him quite a bit. So he, he knows this, you know, genre very well. And the, the number of homes really was just what is, you know, what's the density allowed on the land as it is? What if we just cluster that? Originally the community, you know, thought of splitting it evenly, but there's a lot of up, upfront cost that are really hitting Village one. And so in order to help deal with those upfront costs, we ended up moving some of them over to village one. So that's why it's now a 40 unit community.
>> Katie McCamett:Why, why split it up into two villages?
>> Speaker A:Well, there's a, with co housing with communities, we find that, you know, if you're going in and out of the common house, you're sending your 6 year old down to the common house. 40 units is about the max where you can really know everybody. You know, you're not best friends, but you do know everybody and you know everybody's story, right? So, you know, the kids have a lot of freedom there. You can still work with a, you know, a very participatory interaction. You, can still build consents, you know, consensus model. I think as you get larger than that, the odds that you walk in the common house so you don't know everybody starts to increase. So we find generally in co housing communities that sort of 30 to 40 homes is a really good size. It's big enough that it actually allows for a fair amount of diversity. People of all different ages, backgrounds and such. And at the same time you really do know everybody in the community.
>> Katie McCamett:I want to jump over to you, Dave, because you had talked about whenever you were writing that book, you had an avatar of who you were writing for. And I want to know if you've done the same thing, especially now that you have some of those early adopters that are saying, yes, I want to be in this community. Who is this community for? What's, what's the lived experience going to be for them?
>> Dave Bodlein:Gosh, it's funny, I thought more about the avatar concept early on and then my world became filled with septic plans and water systems and concrete tanks and road widths and all that kind of stuff. And so we have a whole marketing team that I'm sure is more on top of that. I just, I just joined our marketing team. So I'm the new guy in the marketing world. But, when you talk about the lived experience here, you know, I think the reality is when we first started out, my hopes were that, you know, the majority of people living in the house would be farmers, like maybe making their livelihood as farmers. I don't think that's going to happen. And that's okay. I think the reality is we're going to get people in these homes who, while they may not be farmers, are wildly enthusiastic about supporting regenerative agriculture, land preservation and all those sorts of things. My hopes are we get some farmers in the homes, like as in making your livelihood via farming, or at least it's a part of your livelihood. And that's awesome. But the idea that we have really good land here means we'll be able to have farmers doing regenerative work, filling the space up. And then imagine if you're farming here, having people from these neighborhoods, you know, talking about what their day to day life might be like. They might work, they might be like, I need to get outside. I've been on the computer all day. Cool. How about you go help Brett weed a row of carrots, right? There's going to be all kinds of support that we can supply for farmers. Imagine if you were a farmer doing a vegetable CSA and there's 70 homes on the property filled with people who are wildly supportive of what you're doing. That sounds like low hanging fruit, right? So, you know, we do farm fests. The community comes out to help run those farm fests. There's all kinds of land here. We have, you know, almost, almost 70 acres of what we have is forest. There's forest stewardship, things that the whole community can be involved with. So what I'm hoping we see is a community that is actively interested in stewarding land, being involved in their land, re patterning their relationship with both land and other people. You know, if it can be a part of your life, like in addition to working and raising kids and all the other things you're doing, are you also spending more time outside because you're here and there's stuff to do and people to guide you to, so you know what to do, right? Are you also repatterning your relationship with other people by instead of just go to work, come home, go in your house, heat up your dinner, wash, rinse, repeat. What if instead you're coming home from work, you're going through the common house to grab your mail, you're running into Fred. Fred says, hey, why don't we have a beer later? Now you're going and having a beer with Fred and then you go to common house dinner, and then after dinner someone's playing cribbage and so now you're playing Cribbage. And just like your kids are running around with a bunch of other kids. And it's all within this farm context, right? This idea that you're either raising kids or living on and supporting a thriving regenerative agriculture project as like a core part of what you're doing with your life seems like setting the stage correctly to have a, high quality life with a lot of meaning to it.
>> Katie McCamett:I'm in. I'm in. We can just end this right now.
>> Speaker A:I think there's a really, really important concept here, right? Which is for most of us, the money we spend on our house, if we're, particularly if we're a home buyer, is really the most significant investment we make. And I'm always shocked at how little that is tied to people's values. There is this assumption that if we succeed, we have to have a single family house and take care of our family all by ourselves. And it just really is a silly way to live. And it certainly, that's what got me interested in co housing is I thought, okay, the US is 5% of the global population. We use 24% of the Earth's resources. The way things are going is the rest of the world looks to the US American subdivision as success. Subdivisions are growing in China, subdivisions are growing in India. If the Indian population all expects a single family house with air conditioning, we're dead. It's just that simple. And so when I found co housing, it's like, here's a better way to live that is also easier on the earth, right? And so I think, as is home buyers. How we use our money to support our values, to really invest in our values, is something I think all of us could really spend a lot more time thinking about.
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>> Katie McCamett:Because you, you can see the patterns far beyond this one project. Katie, does it attract, does co housing attract multi generational living? Does it attract people at certain points in their life? can you see patterns that, that emerge?
>> Speaker A:Well, yeah, I mean it in the United States, just because of the available financing, it's a home buyer model, right? It's, it, it could be different things but there's, we have the United States, we have so little money for affordable housing and almost nothing for affordable homeownership. That's why cohousing is largely a market rate home buying model because of what's a available financing in the United States. And so that means that you know the, the age of home buying keeps going up. You know it used to be in your 20s, now it's in your 30s. So it's generally in what the real estate market calls a household formation stage where you know, you're no longer want to live in a shared house because you have a partner, maybe you have a kid on the way, you know, you're looking for a little more privacy of your own, but you still want to be part of community. I mean I raised my daughter in co housing. It is a fabulous way to raise kids. I mean you have all these great models around you. They're learning from different adults and other kids. My daughter I think has the most amazing communication skills and I don't think that was her parents. I think that was that she lived amongst all these other people and she could talk to a 2 year old or an 80 year old very comfortably and she just could draw from all of those resources. So I think raising kids in community is just really fabulous and I really do not understand how people manage outside but it's also a great way to age. You know, my kids gone and, but I have a, I have a three year old next door and I have a four year old down the street and I have teenagers around me that I you know, so I have all of that in my life in a way that most people don't have. If it's not your immediate family, it's not your own family, right? So I, I would just say it's so enriched my life on a day to day basis.
>> Katie McCamett:Yeah, I love that. I, and I think this is why. Well, I don't want to actually put words in, in your mouth right now. where do you think the co housing movement is going? Is it gaining, is it staying static?
>> Speaker A:I think the thing that I've learned the hard way is you know we are up against so many barriers. On one hand, building new housing has gotten much, much more expensive. You know, the cost of building housing went up 40% from 2019. Every community I'm working with has had to deal with that. And it's one thing if you already own a home, because then the value of that also went up. But it's much harder for young people to get in the market without family help or something. So I would say that's an overwhelming issue across the United States, everywhere. You know, I've been doing this a long time now. And during that time, American society's gotten more and more isolated. People don't know how to do community anymore. There's an interesting new movie called, Join or Die that came out by, the guy who wrote Bowling Alone. And it's just, you know, when he's, you know, the same trends that he identified in Bowling Alone. When was that? The late 80s that came out. I think of just, you know, people less involved in every level, whether it's the local Elks club or city council or their schools, People are much more in, tied into their devices. They don't have people over for dinner. They're just less involved generally. And so the need is ever greater. The ability of people to actually do it, I think is harder. The need has never been stronger.
>> Katie McCamett:Well, and I think that's what makes this project so interesting and unique, is that you're infusing a co housing concept that I, and I am, right there with you around, living your values and what that looks like, as well as creating intentional community and creating whole communities, right, for isolation reasons, for raising families, aging, it's just overwhelming. There, is a lot of people seeking that out. And on the other hand, this whole farm to table movement and really understanding where our food comes from, and if you connect that with the bigger picture that we're losing 2 million acres of farmland a year in the United States towards urbanization, that once we pave over it, it's gone. And we forget that we've settled on some of the most fertile farmlands in the country, where our metropolitan regions are and our zoning is set up so that it, you know what, that 240 acres is going into a car or two car garage, front door, lollipop tree, two car garage, front door, lollipop tree and so forth. So to do a project like this where you're actually conserving 90% of the land, bringing that conservation to the forefront, and then creating opportunities for people to have a relationship, there And a community. There's not a lot of other projects like it. I know I'm on a soapbox right now, but I'm paying a lot of attention towards the conservation community movement. And so much I see the farm being the lifestyle and the amenity, and it's, it's more the agriculture supports the development. And even the way that, you know, publications like Builders magazine will describe it is that these neighborhoods have swapped out the golf course for the farm that is the amenity. But so rarely do you find projects where the development is supporting the agriculture.
>> Dave Bodlein:Yeah.
>> Katie McCamett:And why I think that this is a project where you can actually see the statistics from even afar. if you squint 90% of the, of the land is farmland, you start to realize, wow, that is a very different feel than something where you are maximizing the floor area ratio and having as many suburban homes as possible. One of the things that I took away from the walkabout that we did with Dave not that long ago was just how cool the agricultural operations already are before there's even housing there. Dave, I'd love for you just probably doesn't have to be exhaustive because I know that you've done so many amazing things with different programs, but why don't, why don't you give us a mental tour of, of what the agricultural side of things looks like?
>> Dave Bodlein:Sure. Right now we have eight different farmers who are operating here on the property. And, if you also count the. A couple of projects being done by the community ourselves, we, got 10 different farm enterprises happening here, ranging from eggs and pork to cut flowers, to culinary herbs, to berries, to CSA vegetables to ducks. All kinds of different things happening here. All of them are being done under a regenerative farming model to give people a sense. That means we're really looking at how can we have functional ecologies that produce food rather than just obliterate that ecology so that you can make way for your food. we're looking at things like supporting pest, predator insects, bringing in pollinators. we're looking at soil stewardship with the idea that healthy crops, healthy nutrition starts with healthy soils. So it's a very different form of farming, in terms of, you know, the big O word Organic. Right. we do not require that our farmers certify organic, like formally through usda. However, we want to make sure that people can if they want to. We're sort of maintaining the land in a organic ready state is what we're saying. Right. So that means if you're farming here you don't have to certify organic, but you need to manage your land and track things in such a way that if you leave and somebody else wants to come take over your operation, they could immediately certify organic if they wanted. So we got all these different things happening here, right? And like I said, with eight different people, eight different, not even just people, eight different entities, all farming here, this creates a way, way better situation for farmers than if you're young farmer and you're just like, I'm just going to go and lease that 20 acres over there and do my thing on my own, right? Think about it for a minute, Neil. If you didn't grow up in a farming family and inherit the farm, how are you supposed to get off the ground? How do you pay for the tractor? How do you get an irrigation system up and running? How do you get the accounts and the sales and go to the farmer's market and run your operation? And bear in mind, all these people trying to do this stuff are the same people who live and do all the other things in society, which means they have kids, they have a car payment, they have to live somewhere, all these sorts of things. So getting into farming is like there's so many barriers to make it happen. Which is why you see the average age of a farmer continuing to move north of the retirement age, right? And then what do you see happen as a result of that? Farmland converts to development because that's who buys it. Or farmland ends up being owned by big agribusiness. So the idea of the small family farm is this really shrinking and dwindling thing. Well, you know what, it's a lot more stable when you have a bunch of people farming together. It's a more resilient way to do this is farming as a community. If any one of our farmers doesn't succeed and closes up their farming business, the land doesn't end up with the bank. But that is the reality for a lot of other small farmers, right? So for the farmers this is a super beneficial model. And it's not just us who think so, right? In our core budget we put$200,000 towards farm infrastructure improvements. We augmented that by getting a grant from WSDA, for 113,000 more dollars for post harvest infrastructure. So now when you come here and you lease an acre from us, you also get access to a 60 horsepower tractor, a BCS walk behind tractor, a bunch of implements, a wash pack area, a cold storage, a refrigerated van to get your stuff to market a functioning irrigation system. All these things are up and running and we've put those into play. And now we've got these people who are kind of stewarding the land and involved here, having conversations with each other and helping to manage it together. I think we had one farmer who was, I think he was doing an initial till because most of our land was in pasture when we inherited it. Although tillage is not usually something that's part of the regenerative ag scene or at least often it's sort of, it's shunned a little bit. Right. Converting from pasture a one time till often makes sense. We had a couple of really enthusiastic farmers who were trying to turn some beds by hand. One of the other farmers had the tractor out and was like, how about if I just do that for you in five minutes. So little opportunities to help with those sorts of things and have people collaborate. Super, super valuable. The whole concept of loneliness that Katie brought up, what Was it in 2023? Right. Was when the Surgeon General put out the call, hey, we have an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Look at how that crosses over into statistics around farmer suicides. Right. Farmers are feeling as isolated as hell as well. Right. And this is a system where farmers are not isolated, they are working together, they are collaborating, they're talking to each other, they're potlucking. This year we had two different farms that did a csa. Last year we had two farms, three farms that were selling at farmers markets. I believe four of our different operations this year have decided to do a collective csa. So now you will get products from three different awesome farms with possible add ons from some of the other ones when there's, when there's stuff to sell. So that to me is something that would never happen if you weren't sharing a piece of property and helping to co steward piece of land.
>> Katie McCamett:And how, how is that getting guided right now? I and before you answer that, I was reading a book last night called Big Team Farm, something like that. I sorry to the author if I'm just butchering the name of your book, but I'm watching these large farms that they have the issues that you're talking about. You know, aged out farmer, very stressed out. If somebody wants to come in, they're going to have to deal with a really high cost of acquisition of that land and then the whole vertical suite of operations to make that enterprise profitable. But it seems like at the edges here there are organizations and farms that they're trying to figure out how people can steward, the land together. And you're doing it, but do you provide a structure for it or is that organic? And it kind of unfolds and coalesces naturally. What's been the process like for Rooted.
>> Dave Bodlein:We provide some amount of structure, like there's a framework, but we also invite the people who are farming here to help define that structure. We are actively trying to not have a conventional lessor, lessee arrangement with our farmers. Right. We actively want the people who are on the ground who know regenerative agriculture, who know soil stewardship to be the ones who drive the decisions for farming. And we do have a bunch of people who are on board as home buyers who are also either farmers or interested in being involved in farming. And so we kind of work together to figure out how things are going to come together. And we let the farmers say, hey, I've been handling all this thing that is really something that we all benefit from. I've been doing all the road maintenance. How do we split the road maintenance more evenly so that we all partake in that? And so we're always looking for opportunities to do that. And on our end, it was Rooted Northwest that applied for the grant in order to get all the post harvest infrastructure that now all the farmers can benefit from. Right. Eventually, if, if somebody wants to go certified organic, then Rooted Northwest will certify our wash pack facility so that all the farmers can have soup to nuts certified products coming out of the farm if they want. That's how we can provide services for these farmers. And that doesn't even count the actual on the ground help that, that someone can do this. last Saturday, Rooted Northwest Berries, the group of people who are running, a five acre berry operation, had 500 blueberry plants ready to go on the ground. So we held a work party. Bunch of people who aren't farmers came out and we helped them put their blueberries in the ground. And guess who's probably going to buy their blueberries later. Right? So that's the big part of this. I want to also make sure we're clear. You know, you mentioned, is it the farm supporting the housing or is it the housing supporting the farm? We're very much leaning into this. The housing supports the farm piece. Right. This isn't sharecropping. Like if you live here, it's not like you should expect to have, you know, people delivering blueberries to your door and and on a daily basis or anything like that. It's like, no, no, you have an opportunity to purchase high quality Regeneratively grown blueberries and help support a farm livelihood right here. Because this is the big misnomer that I think is out there. Just preserving farmland isn't enough. You also have to preserve the farmers that work that land. Otherwise, it's just a vacant farm. Right. The notion of this agrarian landscape, the beautiful rustic farms on the east coast, what a lot of people are picturing right now when I say that is they're picturing a defunct farm with an old barn that's kind of falling in and, oh, isn't it bucolic and beautiful? That's not real farming. That's not what keeps the farm economy going. That's not what puts food in bellies. What puts food in bellies is working farms and working farmers. And that's what we're all about supporting.
>> Katie McCamett:Tell me a little bit more about some of the really exciting projects or, exciting projects to you. I mean, I, I can spout out some of the ones that, that were most memorable to me. I mean, we did a mushroom log inoculation project here at our farm, and I remember seeing that at yours, but you took it to the, to a whole different level. that I thought was so cool. What, what are some of your favorite examples that have gone on, on the land so far?
>> Dave Bodlein:Well, we have very little mushroom logs right now, but hopefully going to be growing one of our farms. Holman Family Farms, they do CSA vegetables, but they're also interested in mushrooms. So we've actually leased them one of the old sheds here to do a mushroom grow lab. I know they wanted to do. I think, I think they were particularly interested in lion's mane mushroom, which is great. I take that as a supplement. I will buy that from them all day long. Right. One, of the other great examples, we have Midgarden, farm. And their process for converting pasture into vegetable crops is first they run pigs through, and those pigs act like rototillers. They turn it up, they eat clumps of grass, they turn over the soil, then they move them on. Then they send chickens through. The chickens will eat seeds, weed seeds. They will, you know, peck at little new grasses coming back. They'll spread the pig manure, that sort of thing. Then they move them on. Then they form up beds and grow vegetables after the ground has already been converted, manured, all that kind of stuff. And so you have this rotational system that gets you multiple crops in one area. A couple of the other exciting ones are some of the ones we've tackled as a community. So we worked with the Snohomish Conservation District in order to do what they called their wet feet farming project. They were looking for agroforestry solutions. So agroforestry is using tree crops in agriculture. they were looking at agroforestry systems for ground here in Snohomish county that is getting wetter and wetter over time. Right. Mostly floodplain. We're not on a floodplain, but, we do have some wet ground. So, we planted three acres in what we call an alley cropping system. So it's big, 30 foot wide swaths of hay that our hay farmer can get their equipment into and can continue to harvest hay with rows of shrubs and tree crops. In our case, aronia berries, hazelnuts, elderberries and pawpaws. And we're experimenting to see which of these can thrive with wet feet. that's one example of a project that we're working with the conservation district on. There's also an organization called Agroforestry Northwest. And right now we're just getting ready to put in a system with them. We're looking to do what's called forest farming. So in our case that means going into a deciduous understory and saying, what kinds of cropping systems can we do here in the understory? So we've got maples, and this year they've been tapping those big leaf maples. So big leaf maple sugaring is a thing. We're experimenting with it here. And you don't have to cut down the maples in order to put other crops in there. So we also just put in, I think a dozen tea plants, as in green tea, black tea, camellia sinensis. We're experimenting to see if those thrive in the understory in those conditions, getting the right varieties. And then we have a bunch of other understory medicinals and, perennial vegetables, ramps, ginseng, black cohosh, things like that that we're putting in this spring. Let's see, Reconnecting Roots Farm was our first farm to get started. Here they are no till vegetable farm. So when, you till the soil, you know, you volatilize some of your nutrients, you lose them to the atmosphere, you open things up to erosion, but you also disrupt the soil food web, the soil microbes that are in there doing their thing. Some of them like to be at the surface, some of them like to be down further. Well, when you till, you throw all that into chaos. So if we don't disturb that as much, we can, you know, have those communities underneath your feet, continue to grow and develop and complexify over time. So no till farming, is a good way to do it. That's how they grow their vegetables that they sell at farmer's market. They've also linked up with our local food bank. So a lot of the produce, like last year we produced hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of beets and carrots and lettuce and all kinds of things that went out to fill bellies in Snohomish County. Arlington Food bank receives a bunch of our food. We want to stop. Nowhere shy of budging the needle on food security here in Snohomish County.
>> Katie McCamett:Amazing. This is where I'm looking to the future of like we. You have a month, a bunch of really amazing farm programs that are going on. Farmers are learning how to do this collectively. Dare say cooperatively. No houses though, not yet. You've got entitlements. How do, how do we get to the finish line? How, how do we get people living in homes, in community adjacent to the farm, going out and picking blueberries and helping their neighbors and having just epic, beautiful meals at the end of the day?
>> Speaker A:You know, the project can move toward construction of homes over the next year. We're now really set to do that. The number one thing the project needs is homebuyers for Village One. So we've got a really strong core group. It is growing. There's a series of information sessions, farm visits, ways you can find out more if you go to the website and that, you know, it's really, it's again, people putting their money, their housing dollars in a, in a neighborhood like this as opposed to a single family house subdivision more typically. And so that's what the immediate thing is really more home buyers. we will also over the next year be shopping for both investors, and a construction loan to get Village One under construction. So I think within the next year we'll be breaking ground. But again, what we got to take to the banks is we have real home buyers, they're invested here and that's how this project's going to get built. And I think, you know, one of the things I really like about co housing and Rooted is certainly a great one, is really great, interesting people who've done interesting things in their lives and bring all of that, you know, an interest in farms, but not just farmers. Right. Really broad spectrum of backgrounds that people bring to the community which enriches the community overall.
>> Katie McCamett:And you have a really interesting program for people that. Want to check it out? I forgot the name that you were putting on that. Can you explain what that looks like?
>> Speaker A:The Explorer program.
>> Katie McCamett:The Explorer program. That's what it is, right?
>> Speaker A:Yeah. The way you get involved is, first of all, there's, there the community holds information sessions, at least once a month, sometimes every two weeks. So you can just, you know, virtually find out more. And there's a lot of information on the website also. But I'd encourage you to sign up for an information program and then if you're like, oh, this is kind of interesting, I'd really like to kind of get into the details. That's the Explorer program. So you put up a little bit of money to sort of become an explorer. And then we sort of open all. Here's everything we know, here's all the documents. What do you need to know? Because, you know, it's really important that it's really transparent. You know, here's where the money goes in, here's how it comes out, here's the budget, here's the plan, you know, and get to know the other community members. So you, you know, are these people. I feel like I could live, I could work with, you know, I mean, I have my own house, so I can always go in and shut the door. But. But you know, you are investing together. So I think it's, you know, building those relationships as well. And then you decide, okay, yeah, yeah, I can make this work. So then you become a full member, a, member as ultimately of an llc, which is the development entity, and move toward construction.
>> Katie McCamett:Do you have a builder in mind? Are you going with a particular style of home? Are you?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, the home's been designed. The architect, Brian, you know, so we, they've all part of the preliminary plat approval with the county. we are in the process of looking for development and builder partner, that will build out and help secure the construction financing. So that's really the sort of immediate next steps as well.
>> Katie McCamett:Yeah.
>> Dave Bodlein:And if people want to see what the houses are going to look like, you can see some 3D renderings on the on our website. And wait.
>> Katie McCamett:Yeah, why don't you do a plug for the website right now to give people a place that they can go. Check it out.
>> Dave Bodlein:Rooted NW.org and there's lots of information there, FAQs, introductions to the land, pages for farmers and people who want to be farmers. We got some pages on there for our farmers. I know our farmers are trying to get people to sign up for their Big macro CSA this year. So if anybody's interested in that and you're local to the area here north of Seattle, Holler. But the, maybe the most important things people can find there are the dates for our next set of info sessions which are just zoom sessions. You hop on and it's a you know, hour and a half or two hours, something like that, where you can learn all about the project and ask basic questions. you can also get on our newsletter, find out the latest information as it comes out. That's how we reach out to people, gives you more information on what we're doing.
>> Katie McCamett:Basic questions only, is that the rule?
>> Dave Bodlein:You can ask complex ones, but if they're super hyper specific to you and you alone, we may or may not have time to get there during the info session.
>> Katie McCamett:I'm sure you've gotten a few of those. Well guys, this is really exciting. You know, it's such a pleasure to go out and walk the land. I think it's going to be an amazing community whenever it gets built. Katie, as you go forward, do you think this is going to set the trend here of development supported agriculture communities across the country or DARE side of the world?
>> Speaker A:I think it's a really important model, you know. So one of the things I like about co housing is the range of ways, you know, I've got four stories on half an acre, you know, in downtown Sacramento and then we have 240 acres here in Arlington. So there's such a range of different ways, different densities that you can build community at. But I, you know, I'm the on the board of my local conservation land trust here and I just. So often we get this, there's this like, you know, as housing or open space, as housing or forest, as housing or farms. And I don't think it has to be that way. And so I think the model of using market rate housing as a way to save land is a model I'm very, very excited about. And I think the Sonoma county with the ordinance, a new ordinance showing how you could process something like this will be a national model. And I certainly hope that we'll see more of this all over the country.
>> Katie McCamett:Is there any recommendations that you would share with people that would want to engage a municipality to create that type of zoning? Have you picked anything up or is it just good luck, see if they'll be amenable to this approach towards land use?
>> Dave Bodlein:I would say. And ah, Katie, I would be curious to hear your response as well. But what I think that the keys to success here are is to find your champion. Right? Like, who is your champion within that system that knows how it works and can help push it forward? We had champions on the planning commission. Our county council member for this area, Nate Nearing, was absolutely instrumental to getting the ordinance writ and has been super supportive since we first had the idea. So, having those people who are in the machine who know how it works to help you navigate it seems like the biggest key to success for me. And if there are no champions, if nobody has any interest, then I've maybe looked for a different location to try and do your project.
>> Speaker A:Yeah, that was really clear. I mean, I have to say I wasn't going to the meetings, so I was always a little suspicious. It's like they really. But they, you know, it took a while. You couldn't do it on a fast pace. It's questionable whether a developer, who needed to make a profit could make sense of about five years of working it through to get to a preliminary plat. But I. But I would totally agree that the county did deliver. They were supportive. But I think the other thing is we weren't changing density. You know, I could. I think it's silly, but Americans are scared to death of density. And if you took ag land and wanted to add housing onto it that wasn't previously allowed within that zoning, I think you have a much harder fight, which doesn't make sense to me. But it is the nature of the beast. I think it's much easier when you're reallocating the same density, the same amount of homes in a cluster that you can actually start to really make this work.
>> Katie McCamett:Would you say then that this is best suited for, like, the peri. Urban land that is threatened by development?
>> Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly. Is that here with the location. And you know, when they told me what their site criteria was, I like, well, yeah, good luck with that. Finding, you know, big ag land within an hour of Seattle is pretty amazing. Right? So by the. But it's also the most threatened. Right. So if you're trying to say again, whether it's ag land or forest land or that's where the real impact is, where our cities are growing out to and growing. You know, 5 and 10 acre lots is a great way to really, whether it's wildlife or ag land, it pretty much destroys it all.
>> Katie McCamett:Well, guys, this was a great introduction to rooted Northwest. I wish you both so much success going forward to. To getting those. There's buyers for Village one and for Village two I think the land is really special and anybody that takes a walk around there, you get a sense of that right away. It's also great to have Dave be the tour guide. Dave, I'm sure you're going to go on to found many more of these master plan communities. You are a wealth of knowledge now after going through it trial by fire. So I suggest everybody go check out Rooted Northwest's website and sign up for an informational session and check it out for yourself.
>> Neal Collins:That is a wrap on today's episode, but I don't want this to be a one way conversation. I'd love to hear about the projects and ideas you're working on. The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. Just search Neal Collins and if my team at Hamlet Capital or Latitude Regenerative Real Estate can help bring your vision to life, whether it's buying or selling a home or developing a community integrated within a farm, do not hesitate to reach out world. Let's build something meaningful together.
>> Speaker A:Sa m.