Across the country, from rural California to Alabama, communities of color are purchasing and stewarding land together, building tight-knit settlements organized around shared principles and collective care.
In Boonville, California, about 115 miles north of San Francisco, Zappa Montag tends fruit trees and vegetable gardens on 189 acres of densely forested property. He is one of six Black residents at Black to the Land, an off-grid ecovillage where residents draw water from wells and power their homes entirely with solar panels. Montag describes the project as an effort to "reverse-gentrify the country."
The land supports dozens of fruit trees alongside plots of squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, corn, and peppers. A small stream runs through a valley ringed by hills and redwoods, creating an isolated sanctuary far from urban sprawl.
These settlements, formally called intentional communities, are not new. Black Americans and Indigenous people have long organized themselves into communal living arrangements built on shared values and common vision. The concept takes many shapes: some are rural ecovillages like Black to the Land, while others operate as co-housing developments in cities, where residents maintain private living units but share common spaces and resources.
What distinguishes these modern iterations is an explicit political purpose. Participants frame their communities not simply as lifestyle choices but as deliberate acts of resistance against displacement and economic extraction. By pooling resources to purchase land collectively, residents aim to build wealth that cannot be easily stripped away through individual foreclosure, gentrification, or predatory lending.
The timing reflects broader conversations about land equity. Historically, systemic policies denied Black Americans and Indigenous people the ability to accumulate property wealth. Redlining, forced removal, and discriminatory lending kept these communities out of homeownership during decades when real estate appreciated significantly. Intentional communities offer an alternative framework: shared stewardship that prioritizes long-term stability and cultural continuity over individual asset accumulation.
Participants emphasize ecological sustainability alongside social goals. Many communities incorporate regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, and conservation practices. This dual focus on environmental stewardship and racial justice appeals to residents seeking to align their daily lives with their values.
From urban co-housing spaces to rural ecovillages spanning hundreds of acres, these projects represent a growing movement. Residents are consciously choosing interdependence over isolation, collective decision-making over individual autonomy, and communal land stewardship over property speculation.
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