Across fourteen chapters that weave together memoir, social science research and the narratives of Hope Meadows residents, Neighbors portrays an intergenerational neighborhood that, by putting together "a whole bundle of problems...produced a whole bunch of solutions." —Ted Koppel, Nightline
In this era of angry politics, fractured support systems and life-threatening pandemics, we are faced with a deep sense of disempowerment and of disconnection from all that is familiar. Neighbors is a hopeful blueprint for change, a book with four distinguishing strengths that move it beyond social science and history into the realm of what can be.
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Neighbors addresses the urgent question of how we revitalize and renew our struggling communities. While writers and thought leaders like Tom Friedman and James Fallows have begun to explore what differentiates failing communities from their thriving counterparts, there is not yet a roadmap to get from here to there, let alone one that includes people—all people—as part of the exploration.
Neighbors offers a hopeful prescription for bringing people together to address problems in housing, health care, retirement, and caregiving. Utilizing what psychologist Ann Masten calls the “ordinary magic” of family, friends and neighbors, intentional neighboring responds to social challenges by doing what government, business and social services were never designed to do—focus on caring relationships.
Neighbors recounts the story of an intentional community that actually works—and how we made it work. So much more real than a utopian “pie in the sky,” it provides a vision of how we would like to live and how we can live. It speaks to readers directly, helping them to imagine how they too might lead the way in the creation of new and eminently human solutions to human problems.
Neighbors is a book built to last. Emerging from intensive research and the twenty-five-year history of a community of practice, this book’s compelling stories of individuals and lessons for creating caring communities provide a vision of the lost and perhaps squandered power of everyday people to unite us. This credible and revealing vision will make Neighbors relevant and useful for years to come.
In Neighbors: The Power of the People Next Door, author Brenda Krause Eheart tells the story of Hope Meadows, the first intergenerational planned community in which seniors commit to neighboring as a way to provide support to families seeking to adopt children out of foster care. Neighbors brings to life the residents who came to call Hope home: the retired seniors who longed for purpose in their lives; the adoptive families who needed all the love and support they could get; and the children who were now surrounded by new families and grandfriends.
By bringing Hope Meadows to life, this book about the caring power of the people next door enables readers to see what intentional neighboring looks like in action. Later chapters focus on the core values and principles supporting the mission and guiding the day-to-day life of the Hope Meadows community during Brenda’s tenure there. These values inspired three critical shifts in thinking: changing how we view family, how we view vulnerability, and how we view older adults. Resident stories chronicle the deep ways in which these new perceptions informed their relationships and transformed their lives. Finally, Neighbors brings the lessons of Hope Meadows into today’s world, drawing its core values and design patterns into a model to strengthen our country’s fraying social safety net—one taken up by innovative leaders across the country. These leaders are addressing a variety of social needs and offering an imperative for change in the way we value, utilize, and understand human relationships and their power to restore and unite us.
Chapter 1
We Must Do Better
Crack cocaine had hit our cities nationwide in a big way, leaving over half a million children in foster care. Many were ages three and older, entering the system alongside brothers and sisters—and too many to count were born with toxic drug exposure. The media wrote daily on the impact of this epidemic. No one knew what the addiction of infants would portend as they grew up. Stories predicting worst-case scenarios headlined the news: these crack babies would be damaged for life, never able to make a meaningful contribution to society as adults. They would be our next lost generation.
Chapter 2
The Rules are the Rules
When John came to live with us we expected…adjustments and difficulties, but we imagined those adjustments would be similar to ones we had experienced in our pasts. We had a nescient faith that we would be able to adjust and overcome any problems simply because we were compassionate adults, and we wanted so much for this adoption to work. We could not begin to imagine the difficulties of reconciling our vastly different worlds of experience.
Chapter 3
Power, Politics and Persistence
When Brenda first sat down in my office and started telling me about her plans, I thought, Here we go again, another flaming liberal with a pie-in-the-sky concept. It was an interesting confrontation. She’s a liberal Democrat. I’m a conservative Republican. I intended to talk to her a little while and then kick her out of my office. But as she talked, I got intrigued. Our fifteen-minute meeting blossomed into a two-hour conversation. And into an unusual friendship. I thought, I sort of like this woman.
Chapter 4
I’m Here to Help Grandpa
When he came to Hope Meadows at age five, what I remember most was that Kenny had no sense of self. He could not use a personal pronoun like I or mine. When asked to draw pictures of his family, he created stick figures of his birth parents and siblings, but when adding himself to the picture he drew only a body, arms and legs—a beheaded boy. Besides severe neglect, Kenny had endured physical abuse, including being burned by cigarettes and (by his own account) being thrown into deep water by his father where he almost drowned for lack of knowing how to swim.
Chapter 5
The Parents: A Giant Leap of Faith
Beverly Connor had her ups and downs in raising three kids. She and her husband Larry wanted to adopt children coming out of foster care, in part because Larry had spent part of his youth in the system and he knew he could help other children who had been uprooted as he had been. He understood their pain, confusion, and insecurity. Larry and Bev were active in the community and well-liked by everyone, especially their children…and then, suddenly, Larry died.
Chapter 6
It’s Really a Wonderful Life
I’ve watched this man. I’ve watched the healing in him. It wasn’t all sickness. It was loneliness. I’ve seen this man come alive. I mean, I watch him have a reason to get up in the morning, and when night comes, he is so tired. It’s a good tired.
Chapter 7
Making the Big Difference: Caring Relationships
This Hope experience required all of our residents to cast aside three common and deeply-held beliefs—assumptions that place undue burdens on individuals and families and diminish the worth of people. The first is tied to our national value of independence and best described as the bootstraps theory of personal success. The second belief is a derivative of that theory, assuming those who can’t always pull themselves up by their bootstraps—those who are vulnerable—are somehow problems to be solved, burdens. The third assumption is that as we age our lives become less potent, our contributions less significant. At Hope we worked hard to transform these beliefs in favor of a collective and interdependent community response to human needs, recognizing the value of every individual in our midst and the power of caring relationships among people of all ages.
Chapter 8
Reframing the Meaning of Vulnerability
One experienced foster parent…believed she knew exactly how to parent her troubled foster children—they simply needed tough love. When her eight-year-old Jessie refused to get out of bed in time to get ready for school, this foster mom poured cold water on Jessie’s face! That, she said to me with satisfaction, got her out of bed. This was one of Hope’s most difficult and defining moments.
Chapter 9
Engaging Older Adults: No Small Thing
At the beginning of the day, during the heart of the day, and at the end of the day older adults provide a web of familiarity, continuity, trust, belonging, encouragement, and hope for the entire community. The integration of older adults is not just a nice thing, but necessary to the amelioration of social problems within the community. The ready availability and engagement of older adults reduces the stress families may experience caring for children and managing their households, thereby enhancing family functioning. Older adults form the bedrock of social connectedness and communal participation, both powerful determinants of individual and community wellbeing.
Chapter 10
Doing Life Together
Dear Grandma Fran,
I want you to know that if you need anything you can call on me. I am very sorry for his death. If you need a liver or something, I’ll find you one. That’s all I can do. But anyway, if you want to talk about anything, you can call me. If you need help moving…anything, call me.
Sincerely, Calvin [age twelve]
Chapter 11
From Intervention to Intentional Neighboring
Imagine belonging to a community where thoughtful neighbors come together to address some of our nation’s most complex social challenges; where those who are vulnerable are also valued community members who participate and contribute; and where older adults find meaning and purpose in their daily lives, even at the end of life, through caring relationships and committed engagement.
Chapter 12
Design Patterns to Strengthen Social Connection
Design patterns are broad guidelines that can be implemented in various and often innovative ways, and they are much like seeds in that they have different results when planted in different soil. Alexander explains that design patterns must adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community.
David Hopping observed, Together they form an intuitive template for creating opportunities and supports for successful interaction and long-term flourishing, and when implemented flexibly and creatively, can resolve the natural tensions entailed in forming community out of diversity.
Chapter 13
I’m Coming Over and I’m Bringing my Suitcase
When first the idea and then the reality of Hope Meadows began to take over my life twenty-five plus years ago, my friends and colleagues feared I was wasting my time. The project was too big, too radical and idealistic, too ambitious, and far too risky. After all, we were bringing together, as Nightline’s Ted Koppel quipped, a whole bundle of problems. On an empty military base, we were combining seniors, mostly retired, some with health issues, and many with nothing to do; overworked, frustrated and under-supported foster families: and, up to forty children wounded by egregious abuse and neglect. We were at once a licensed foster care/adoption agency (state), a family neighborhood (private), a social service center (nonprofit), and a housing project (market). What made me think this would work?
Chapter 14
Intentional Neighboring: Looking Forward
In truth, intentional neighboring can exist in any setting that includes homes and willing neighbors; as such, it can be an integral and foundational feature of almost any community-based system of support, from housing to healthcare. After all, what program designed to help any person or group—from young adults with autism to struggling immigrant families, to persons with mental health challenges, or seniors with dementia—would not be enhanced if their clients lived in safe and affordable homes and belonged to a community of caring and supportive neighbors?
Brenda Krause Eheart is a leading authority on intentional neighboring. It was her research while at the University of Illinois that led to her breakthrough idea to create intergenerational communities where vulnerable people can reengage within a supportive environment while also engaging in service to others. In 1994, in response to the ravages of the crack epidemic in her state and its impact on families and children, Brenda started Hope Meadows, an intergenerational community created to support families adopting children from the foster care system, and spent ten years as its executive director. She went on to found Generations of Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the lives of vulnerable populations by tapping the transformative power of intergenerational community living through intentional neighboring.
Brenda has received numerous honors, including The Heinz Award in Human Condition, the AARP Inspire Award, and Elfenwork’s In Harmony with Hope Award. She was named an Ashoka Fellow and a Civic Ventures Purpose Prize Fellow. In 2011, the Obama Administration honored her as a Champion of Change. Her work with Hope Meadows has been honored by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Innovations in American Government (finalist), and she was presented the US Department of Human Services Adoption Excellence Award by President Clinton. Hope Meadows has been featured in prominent broadcast and print media, including ABC Nightline, CBS 60 Minutes, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The New York Times, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Brenda and Hope Meadows were also featured in Lesley Stahl’s recent book, Becoming Grandma: The Joy and Science of the New Grandparenting.
This collection represents years of research, experience and exploration of intentional neighboring at various stages of concept development.
