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Community Building 101

The fire pit I built in the backyard

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What do you love to do beyond work? Besides bike riding, traveling, exercising to lose weight and community building, I love working with my hands. I’m no expert, but I am an avid learner and I find tremendous joy in creating things. This fire pit was my latest project. My goal was to fund the pit through recent Google Adsense revenue and recyclables too, which was a fun layer to pulling this off. I considered something a bit more fancy or with mortar, but this will work for now.

the firepit I built

How I built a fire pit: I bought everything at Home Depot for about $200. It literally took me 1 hour to do this after everything was unloaded into the backyard. Step 1: Lay out your design. Step 2: Dig about six inches down so you have room to lay sand throughout the area where your pit will be. Step 3: Pour four or so bags of paver sand or play sand. Make sure the sand is level. If it is not level the final product is going to look really bad. Step 4: Stack the stones making sure they are level while stacking. Some folks use an adhesive to stick the blocks together, but I chose not to because I didn’t want an adhesive anywhere near flames.

how to build a fire pit

I’m excited for the opportunities this fire pit will create to connect with family and friends. Additionally, it’ll be a perfect space for inviting neighbors over for planned or spontaneous gatherings. I’m telling you, a larger porch and having something to do in the backyard is a potent recipe to build relationships with neighbors.

Community Building 101: By the way, in case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called Community Building 101 a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me know what you think. Download HERE (pdf).

Question: What types of things do you buyers look for in a backyard?

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Make your neighborhood stronger by doing a BBQ

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One of the truths in real estate is that you buy into a neighborhood. You don’t just purchase whatever exists between your parcel lines, but rather a community. Many times it’s easy to forget this though because of how normal it is to drive home, close the garage door as soon as possible, and live an isolated life from neighbors. This is understandable because of the way society is, but over time as a neighborhood becomes a group of parcel islands instead of a united tribe, it makes the community weak and invites crime too.

National Night Out Logo 2013Let me share a simple way to help neighborhoods connect. The first Tuesday in August (8/6/13) is “National Night Out“, which is a fantastic opportunity to mingle with a few neighbors on the front lawn. This is a national event where residents get together across the United States to build community and in the process stand against crime. This is for any neighborhood, whether values are low or high, and it’s for renters and owners alike.

Can you really do this? Each year my household hosts this event for my neighborhood, so I am obviously passionate about it. Since it has been such a rich experience for my family, I wanted to mention it here and encourage anyone reading to consider hosting a potluck this year for your street. Yes, I know life is busy (mine is too). The truth though is each community needs someone to get the ball rolling to help neighbors connect in a small way like this. Let’s face it, nobody really wants to be the initiator, but it’s thankfully not a big thing to pass out some flyers on your street, get a few neighbors on board and go potluck style. In fact, read my 10 tips for hosting a community BBQ to help you get started. The truth is neighborhoods grow stronger when events like this happen because residents have the opportunity to build relationship and communicate about the neighborhood. What if you got the ball rolling this year by hosting a simple BBQ in August? What could happen in your community if residents began to steer the neighborhood to communicate a bit more?

National Night Out BBQ last year

I’m around if you have any questions or simply need some advice for getting neighborhood communication or your BBQ off the ground.

Community Building 101: In case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called “Community Building 101″ a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me know what you think. Download HERE (pdf).

Question: What is the best experience you’ve ever had when it comes to connecting with neighbors? I’d love to hear below.

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The importance of community building

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“Community Building” often feels like a buzzword, but when neighbors get intentional and begin to act on behalf of their community, it’s really powerful. Have you ever experienced that? How so?

While it might feel normal to be isolated from neighbors these days, a community is really only as strong and deep as its communication. Isolation simply does not work well for neighborhoods over the long haul no matter what the economics and demographics are for a community. This doesn’t mean we all need to be extraverted best friends, but only that a lack of communication will increase the likelihood of neighborhood decay.

This is very real to me because I believe philosophically in the ideas mentioned above, and I am also a practitioner. Last Saturday I was able to partner with residents in my neighborhood to plan a clean-up for a stretch of county-owned land near Light Rail tracks. There were 25 or so neighbors, and in just a few short hours we built a fence and spruced up a patch of land that needed some loving. The result? This cleaned-up site can now be a catalyst for pride, and is a small win for neighborhood residents, the surrounding community and even property values.

What do you think sometimes hinders residents from working together to deal with neighborhood issues?

Community Building 101: In case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called “Community Building 101” a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me now what you think. Download HERE (pdf).

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Tools for talking to neighbors online

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Show me a neighborhood where residents never talk and I’ll show you a community ripe for crime and problems. While there is no replacement for actually talking to neighbors in person, these days it’s so easy to be connected online, which can be a huge benefit for a neighborhood to communicate more effectively and solve issues.

Here are three platforms to consider for connecting with neighbors:

  1. Yahoo Groups:  I’ve used the Yahoo Groups platform in my neighborhood for over four years now and it’s been a great tool to build relationships and solve community problems. If you are not familiar with the “Groups” format, it’s basically a place to share messages and communicate quickly with a large number of people. You can share files, pictures, keep a community calendar and more. In my neighborhood it’s common to hear things like, “there is a small brown dog running around” or “there have been some break-ins” or “let’s plan a BBQ next week.” The forum can be private or public, you have the power to moderate, and you can invite outsiders to join the conversation too. It can be helpful to get a group of neighbors on board and also invite council members and police officers to be a part of the forum. The strong benefit is that Yahoo Groups is very easy to use for all ages and you can post by email. The real downfall is that it’s not easy to go back and find old messages and the platform overall is fairly basic. Visit Yahoo Groups.
  2. Google Groups:  This is Google’s version of Yahoo Groups. I have not used this platform personally, but it seems to have all the same features as Yahoo Groups and it is likely just as easy to use. However, Google does appear to have better mobile posting features and my hunch is their platform probably has a smoother design and some nifty tech too. Visit Google Groups.
  3. Nextdoor:  There is a new startup called Nextdoor that touts itself as “social networking for neighbors.” Their site seems very user-friendly so far and has a “Facebook-ish” feel. Only residents in a tightly defined neighborhood can join the Nextdoor site for their community. Nextdoor has a verification process for members, which takes work off of residents figuring out if someone lives in the neighborhood or not. Their system seems to make it very easy to create events, share pictures and have conversation all in one place. The downfall is that you cannot post via email (they say they’re working on that), outsiders cannot join as members (City Hall can join to post messages, but cannot see resident messages), and ultimately Nextdoor is a start-up. We don’t know whether they’ll be successful or not in years to come, though they appear to have big financial backing. Visit Nextdoor.com. I have joined Nextdoor and a few neighbors have done so also. We are testing it out right now and I’ll have more to say about it in coming weeks and months.

What else is out there for connecting? What would you recommend to friends or clients? If you are in real estate, what tools do you suggest to new homeowners when you hand over the keys?

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.