Close for comfort

Seventeen years ago, they were strangers who came together seeking a life beyond the suburbs. They wanted green space and good schools, plus a hefty dose of the Mayberry-style, borrow-a-cup-of-sugar neighborliness they felt was missing from the suburbs.

The answer, they said, lay in a new concept called cohousing, a cross between a commune and a condominium, where homes are individually owned, but land and its upkeep are shared by the community.

Naysayers called them hippie idealists run amok, doomed to the fate of the failed communes of the 1960s.

But today, the New View Cohousing community, which opened in 1995 after six years of planning, is intact atop a hillside in Acton, its members having weathered two divorces, one house fire, one stroke, and one kidney transplant. They have celebrated the births of nine children and advised visiting members of start-up cohousing communities.

"What makes it work is that I don't feel like I'm coming home to a house," said Franny Osman, 46, a wife, mother of three children, and a bio-statistician. "I feel like I am coming home to a community."

Cohousing communities originated in Denmark and have multiplied across the United States since the late 1980s. There are now 202 such communities, including 16 in Massachusetts, according to the Cohousing Association of the United States.

Massachusetts ranks third nationally in the numbers of cohousing communities, after California and Washington. The first cohousing community in New Hampshire was created last year in Peterborough.

Some credit cohousing's success -- in contrast to the failed communal forays of the 1960s -- to its preservation of individual rights, with residents owning and enjoying privacy in their homes. It also fills a growing need for community, some say, as Americans live in increasingly transient neighborhoods and traditional civic organizations fall away -- the so-called bowling-alone phenomenon.

When New View opened with 24 households on 19 acres of former farm land in Acton, it was the third cohousing community in Massachusetts, and the first in the eastern portion the state. Its members found one another through newspaper ads ("semi rural cooperative living" one notice stated in a local paper) and word-of-mouth.

Their ranks spanned decades in age and included newlyweds, couples with children, and childless seniors. Among them was a retired church secretary, an artist, a computer network operator, a psychiatrist, a construction foreman, an MIT professor, an attorney, and nurses.

Many arrived with urban sensibilities but also a love of the outdoors and saw New View as a means of living closer to nature without isolation. For others, it offered a secure environment for children they were raising as single parents. For the childless, it provided a way to participate in children's lives.

"It felt to me how people are supposed to live," said Dana Snyder-Grant, 51, a psychotherapist who moved to the community from Jamaica Plain with her husband.

Members began meeting regularly in 1989 and initially paid assessments to cover legal and architectural fees. After land was located in Acton and a construction loan secured, members made down payments on the homes -- 11 single-family and five duplexes, along with one triplex, priced from $200,000 to $450,000. All the homes included kitchens and a small yard.

Unlike the typical planned community, gated and otherwise, cohousing residents do not own the land around their homes. While New View members owned their own homes and maintained their own finances, they agreed to pay fees for grounds and building upkeep. They also pooled their money for a common house where they could cook shared meals and chat around a cluster of their mailboxes, centrally located to encourage interaction.

In addition, members agreed to participate in community activities intended to increase the quotient of neighborliness, including social events such as video nights and after-school get-togethers. They mowed one another's lawns, plowed shared parking lots, and looked out for one another's children.

More than a decade later, residents say, the original ethos of the community is intact. There are 83 members, according to the Cohousing Association of America. Most of the founding members are still residents; many have developed deep friendships. They have maintained a roster of monthly meetings.

There are still no community rules, but rather a list of "Rights and Responsibilities" that include the right to "privacy of action within your own home" and the responsibility to "share and care for the things which the community holds in common."

Some tweaks have been necessary.

Members have come to realize, for example, that the enthusiasm for maintenance work is difficult to sustain. Large numbers used to turn out for days of poison ivy pulling, leaf raking, and mulching, but now a small core of the same people volunteer for the duties. The group last year, for the first time, hired a property management company.

"We seem to have less motivation or energy to do as much as we did when we were younger," said Steve Hecht, a member of the maintenance committee. "We were going crazy trying to take care of all the details."

Interest, too, has waned for frequent shared meals. When the group began, the plan was to have two shared cooked meals and two potlucks each week. Now, the potlucks continue, but there is just one cooked meal -- and that, often, is ordered in from local restaurants.

But members say they have been surprised by other acts of spontaneous sharing. When Hecht's kidney was failing, a member volunteered his own for transplant; residents turned out Amish-style to help clear smoke damage from a basement fire, and they have aided a resident with her daily chores and driving needs after she had a stroke.

Division, too, has brought the community together.

When Nancy Love and her husband decided to separate after 10 years of marriage, the residents called a meeting, she said, to ask how they might help the couple acclimate as he moved to a home nearby but outside the community.

"I remember saying that the one thing [my husband] had always done and was hard for me was taking out the trash," Love said. "One of my neighbors volunteered to do that for me and did that for the next five years."

A potential trouble spot -- new residents -- has been smooth, residents say. Turnover has been low, and when residents have left, new members have been chosen with ease. Under the group's bylaws, members have the right to try to find a buyer to their liking. If they fail to do so within 30 days, the sellers may choose a buyer, Hecht said.

For a child in the community, life at New View is a whirl of constant companionship, with 36 other children never far off. Most attend Acton public schools.

Lea Love-Moore, 10, said that when friends from public school come to New View to play, she has to explain her neighborhood.

"They are afraid to walk on the lawns. They think they belong to someone else. I have to tell them: 'You can walk on it; it's no one else's.' "

Likewise, she said, she is befuddled when she visits their homes in the Acton suburbs.

"When I go out," she said, "it's like: 'This is what it's like in the outside world!' "

Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.