Peterborough co-operative

Shared living

What began as a community of pottery-selling hippies has evolved into a sophisticated co-operative with a conscience.

Free-range living by Kim Thomas

School teacher Stephanie Pole's lifestyle makes for attention-grabbing dinner party conversation. She lives in a little-known "green" community in the middle of Christchurch, called the Peterborough St Community Living Project, and has done so for 15 years.

"If I mention my living situation to people, they assume it's a commune. You know they are thinking we all run around naked doing rain dances. People think we live in each other's  pockets and wife share, or something crazy."

Stephanie, 43, and 16 other people live at the co-operative, which consists of four 1930s bungalows on a section covered in rambling trees and vines. There are no fences between the properties, and the seven resident children and a small black and white cat roam freely between households.

Residents pay a subsidised rent to the trust that runs the co-operative, but must take part in monthly working bees. Stephanie and her flatmate pay about half the typical market rent for their two-bedroom part of a split bungalow.

All households have their own garden plot, but usually share the spoils with others. Fruit trees on the property bear figs, lemons, apples and pears, red currants thrive, and a beehive produced more than 160kg of honey last year.

Residents get together every Sunday for a shared vegetarian meal and all decisions affecting the community are made through consensus.

The community was established in the early 1980s by late Green Party co-leader Rod Donald and some of his friends. The aim was to have a place where people could live and grow their own food in an urban community.

Many residents have come and gone in the past two decades, but the community is still going strong, with a list of people willing to wait as long as nine years for a spot, Stephanie says.

A chatty woman with a striking head of curly auburn hair, Stephanie first heard about the co-operative from a friend.

"I thought it was in a pretty cool area of town and the old houses appealed to me, as well as the idea of sharing resources. But I was a bit nervous about living so closely with other people.

"When I moved in, it was still in the very hippy phase. They made pottery and sold it and were very much self-sufficient. All the work on the houses was done by the people who lived here."

Rod had moved out by the time Stephanie moved in, but was still very much involved.

"Rod used to tell the story about how he found these dilapidated houses for sale for $99,000. The houses didn't reach reserve at auction, so Rod went to talk to the real estate guy. The guy told Rod if he could produce a deposit by 5 o'clock the houses were his. Rod wrote a cheque for about $7000 and then raced down on his bike to the real estate agents just in time to buy them."

Stephanie says things have changed quite a lot since the early days.

"It used to be really hippy touchy-feely and a lot of the members were unemployed. Some of them hadn't paid rent for six months, but there was this feeling that everything would be okay and it was fine to do that," she says.

"When I moved in, I was considered a bit middle-class, because I had a job and a car. It was quite hard, because I was seen as a bit different because I was quite involved in the 'outside world'.

"My first working bee, I was told to hang a door in one of the houses with someone else. Neither of us had a clue what to do and this simple thing took us all day. It was pretty nerve-wracking. Now things have changed and we've got more money, so we pay professionals to do the things we don't have the skills to do."

Most of the community members now work or study.

While Stephanie wouldn't trade her living situation for quids, there are natural tensions involved in living so closely with others.

"Consensus decision-making can be difficult," she says.  "To move into a place like this, you have to be very tolerant of other people and their views."

*Read more in the March issue*