Housing + Worship Space: Exploring Options for Friends of Black Stone Sanctuary

In 2022, Black Stone Sanctuary published Toward a Cottage Cluster Monastery to outline how we were thinking about finding a potential IRL location at that time.

Plenty has changed since then — BSS has shifted our property-search target to Eugene, OR rather than Portland, for one thing — but the vision of a cottage cluster as an ideal home for BSS is still alive and well.

In a few weeks, Friends of Black Stone Sanctuary (FBSS) will host our first IRL worship service in Eugene (more info coming in our next post), and we plan to hold an informal FBSS meeting to discuss “church business” — organizational structure, legal wrappers, funding, membership, and possibilities for finding housing and worship space in Eugene.

So here’s a primer for those interested in these aspects of what we do.

Are We a Church? A Nonprofit Religious Organization? Something Else?#

Our recent announcement mentioned that

“…the launch of FBSS will mark our first step toward state recognition as a religious entity and a nonprofit organization.”

In the interim, we determined that a religious nonprofit would be overkill for us at this stage. We looked into several other options for organizing FBSS as a church or other religious entity, including fiscal sponsorship, a Public Benefit Corporation, and a Perpetual Purpose Trust.

For now, we decided it would be best to postpone seeking legal recognition from the state of Oregon as a tax-exempt religious entity.

We’ll continue to host gatherings, develop our online presence, and do our homework about other ways to set up a compatible legal wrapper for FBSS as an entity with a religious purpose. Donations to support FBSS won’t be tax deductible for the time being, but they will be put to good use.

As for the cottage cluster vision: the most promising combination of legal + financial structures we’ve seen for FBSS to establish an affordable middle housing development that could serve double duty as a space for a monastic community is a Community Land Trust + Limited Equity Housing Co-Op.

This combination — we call it “the CLT+LEHC housing model” — is where we plan to concentrate our efforts in the years to come.

Much more on this below.

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Coming Soon: Publishing Label + Membership Program#

FBSS will soon launch our Metalabel where we’ll publish our liturgy, prayer printables, incubation retreat guide, and other materials for digital download.

We’ll also introduce a membership program that will be organized and administered through the Dark Forest Operating System (DFOS), which is built by Yancey Strickler and the Metalabel team. (Note: DFOS will be open to the public in April. For now, we’re helping the team test the product, and closely following new developments for the exciting Artist Corporations initiative, for which Yancey is the executive director).

Among other things, we’re hoping the publishing and membership programs will help us get a better sense of the level of interest in FBSS in Eugene before we settle on a legal structure.

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Why Does the Church Exist? What Do We Do? Whom Do We Serve?#

In the process of investigating options for organizing as a church or religious nonprofit in Oregon, we encountered many questions. We found it a fun and worthwhile exercise to answer a few of these questions — for our own future reference, if not for the official paperwork. To wit:

Q: Why does the church exist?

A: Because it is needed.

After a 25-year search we still haven’t found anything else in Oregon — or anywhere else in the States, for that matter — that’s organized in ways that recognize and address our religious needs as contemplative animists and monastics with a polytheistic theology.

We’ve done our best to find what we needed through outreach. We wrote and published essays and blog posts. We hosted monthly dark moon mini-retreats, IRL and online. We started a YouTube channel and a Farcaster channel. We carried on lengthy correspondences and forum discussions with would-be monastics looking for like-minded collaborators. We traveled to Sweden and considered establishing BSS there. We even attended a Christian church out of frustration with paganism!

Believe us, we looked.

At this point it seems our only remaining alternative is to see if we can build what we need ourselves.

Q: Whom does the church serve?

A: As an interfaith group, FBSS serves contemplative animists, polytheists, and their allies. We welcome respectful interest from all walks of life.

Q: What does the church do?

A: We host worship services, fellowship gatherings, mini-retreats, meditation sessions, and dream incubation study sessions, both IRL and online. We also maintain an IRL library and an online gathering space for members and supporters.

Some people tell us they think of what we do as more aligned with Shinto-style animism than with Western concepts of what religion “is,” since we focus more on practice than belief.

We pray, sing hymns, chant, dance, worship deities, make offerings to spirits, and serve as place-makers (tend shrines, design sacred spaces, etc.)

Q: Where does the church operate?

A: FBSS has two “nodes” in Oregon — one in Eugene and one in Portland. We hope to move our HQ from Portland to Eugene in the coming years.

Q: How does your church help the community?

• We offer interfaith fellowship, hospitality, and worship services that cater to minority religious groups. We help our members connect with others interested in similar practices.

• Our liturgy centers on sustained-attention practices and darkness-as-a-healing-force, which speaks to unmet needs that many churches do not address.

• We publish writings about conceptual frameworks and practices that others can adapt to build their own versions of “open source modular monasticism” in a diverse religious milieu.

• It is our intention to build (or convert, or renovate) a retreat space and monastic library as part of a larger affordable housing effort in the community.

Community Land Trust + Limited Equity Housing Co-Op Models (CLT+LEHC)#

In recent months FBSS has gathered detailed info on a combination of two lesser-known legal structures — community land trusts (CLTs) and limited equity housing co-ops (LEHCs) — that can be used in particularly potent ways to develop affordable housing in the state of Oregon.

Turns out Eugene is the epicenter of the CLT+LEHC movement.

We first learned about how the CLT+LEHC combo works through SquareOne Villages, a nonprofit CLT in Eugene that develops community-owned, permanently affordable housing.

In 2024, the directors of SquareOne published an outstanding article that details how they acquired church-zoned land in Eugene from a Christian church with dwindling attendance. They successfully built permanently (!) affordable village-style housing on the property by working directly with the church using the CLT+LEHC model. They’re now working with another church in Eugene to build another village in a similar way, using these same legal and financial structures.

Turns out attendance is declining for a lot of Christian churches in the States, and quite a few are closing their doors and selling or leasing their properties. Who knew?

(John Beckett knew: “Wanna buy a church? They’re about to get really cheap.”)

So why is Oregon an ideal state for housing developments that work with the CLT+LEHC model?

In December 2025 Oregon passed some long-awaited breakthrough statewide housing rules that will make the CLT + LEHC combination much more feasible for housing developers and would-be residents in the coming years.

In “From Zoning Reform to Shared Ownership: How Oregon’s New Housing Rules Incentivize Co-ops” (Dec 2025), Garlynn Woodsong summarizes the new rules:

“The state is clearly signaling that if you want to build conventional market housing, there are limits, but if you want to build homes that are removed from speculative price escalation, Oregon is prepared to allow more homes on the same land. ...these reforms are contributing to an emerging housing paradigm that creates especially fertile ground for cooperative housing in Oregon. ...the state is making room for co-ops, shared equity models, and community land trusts to become part of the everyday housing landscape.”

This encouraging news has given us ideas. We’ve compiled a long list of questions to guide our research efforts, starting with:

Could the CLT+LEHC model lend itself to building an interfaith monastery in Eugene? Perhaps as a cottage cluster?

Working with a land trust that could acquire and hold property that’s already zoned for religious use sounds like it could be a great fit for FBSS, providing that all the parties involved were willing to work with a minority religious group. (Maybe the “interfaith” designation could be helpful here…?)

Dreaming big here: in theory we could even get started with a couple of households living in tiny houses on wheels, assuming we could legally park them in the church parking lot and connect them to onsite utilities.

We could also consider possibilities beyond cottage clusters, to the extent that funding allows. Sometimes co-ops get started with donated properties and land, so it’s a good idea to stay flexible. Cooperative ownership could be applied to any sort of multi-unit structure or land parcel that might suit the residents’ purposes, including individual building sites inside a cooperative subdivision.

We could also consider what Garlynn Woodsong calls “housing+” — a cooperative that includes non-residential space used for income-producing endeavors. Ideas that might work well for FBSS in this context might include hosting sound meditation retreats, a gift shop featuring our signature aromatics and crafts made from PNW conifers, or renting gathering spaces to other groups (with optional consulting services, including custom ambient music playlists for restorative yoga classes, meditation, etc.)

We’d like to see the CLT+LEHC model catch on in any case, though, regardless of how things develop for FBSS.

This is a first: never before in the Sanctuary’s 15 years of existence have we been this inspired and encouraged by legal and financial structures for affordable housing in the States.

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The FBSS Learning Guide to Co-Ops + Community Land Trusts#

We put together a starter learning guide to encourage readers to learn more, and to help get the word out that this is actually possible, at least in Oregon and several other locations in the US. It’s not just theoretical; this model has been successfully implemented in multiple locations.

Co-Ops#

• Housing Co-Ops: The Secret to Affordable Living That No One Tells You About - a general overview from Affordable Housing Heroes.

• Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives: Why They’re a Solution for Our Times - a short book excerpt from Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation.

• Limited Equity Co-Operatives (2021) - a helpful overview by the Housing Solutions Lab.

• Home Base: The Playbook for Cooperative Development (PDF) - detailed advice about the full process for those interested in starting a co-op.

• Oregon Cooperative Housing Network - we’ve been waiting for updates on their “Start a Housing Co-Op” page, but in the meantime it’s worth exploring their general and Oregon-specific resources.

• Housing Cooperatives: Preserving Affordability and Community Ownership in Missoula, Montana (17-min video documentary via Front Step CLT) - From the description: “This documentary short highlights an inspiring cooperative housing model designed to prevent displacement and create home ownership opportunities ... includes firsthand stories of people like Amanda, whose family of five faced displacement when their rental home went up for sale… Amanda and her neighbors were able to purchase their homes collectively, securing long-term stability and sparking a sense of community ownership.”

Community Land Trusts#

• International Center for Community Land Trusts - a good news aggregator.

• A Look at Community Land Trusts and How They Combat the Housing Crisis - an article by Rebecca Schneid for Time magazine (Feb 2025).

• Holding Ground: Using CLTs to Resist Extractive Capitalism and Build Resilience - (Oct 2025, 30-min video presentation via Front Step CLT) - From the description: “Hear from Autumn Ness of Lahaina CLT about how they are using the CLT model to combat predatory post-disaster land grabs, build cross-community solidarity, and rematriate land for indigenous stewardship. ... Part of the 2025 Northwest Community Land Trust Coalition annual gathering.”

  • Note: we highly recommend this triumphant tale of a community organizing effort using the CLT model to prevail over extractive disaster-capitalism forces. When potential buyers swoop in to profit from their desperation after massive destruction from the wildfire of August 2023, the community joins together to resist the forces of economic displacement and stay in their homes. (Ness gives the first 30-min presentation in the video). If you only have 30 minutes to check out one thing from this learning guide, make it this one. It’ll make your day.

  • For more info, see the Lahaina Community Land Trust and a news story from Maui Now.

Church Conversions —> Affordable Housing in Eugene#

News stories about the church conversions by SquareOne Villages in Eugene:

• SquareOne Villages converts church into affordable housing, continuing Eugene trend - NBC16 News (Aug 2025)

• 44-unit affordable housing co-op planned for former church site - LookOut Eugene-Springfield (Aug 2025) - “…the church — which closed after its last service in February 2025 — offered to sell SquareOne Villages the property at below market price because the nonprofit intends to preserve all of the existing buildings.“

Case Studies + Deep Dives#

For the policy nerds and anyone who’s interested in deep dives to think through the possibilities of the CLT+LEHC housing model:

• Community Land Trusts and Indigenous communities: from strategies to outcomes, a 200-page PDF (2015) with Australian case studies. (Recommended by Autumn Ness in the Holding Ground video above).

• Finding Common Ground: A Case Study of Limited Equity Housing Co-Operatives in Washington DC and Washington State (2020) - a 50-page PDF.

This is just a start; we plan to expand this learning guide over time.

We’re also looking forward to the release this year of a new book: The Cooperative Housing Blueprint: A Manual for Equitable Home Ownership.

In the meantime… if the CLT+LEHC model inspires you, perhaps this bit of guidance will too:

“Lead from a place of dreaming your wildest dreams. Build the project like that dream is possible—and then it happens. Don’t act or think small… invitations from the land will guide you when you have no idea how to get there, but you know it’s possible. That connection to the land will tell you what’s needed, how to get there and that you have to do it. […] You don’t need all the answers—just openness. That dreaming and connection to the land and earth will guide that bold vision.”

~ from Partnerships for Indigenous Land Access and Return: A Summary of Legal and Relational Pathways by Lisa Wilson, Forrest King-Cortes, and Diana Ruiz via the Land Trust Alliance Resource Center

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(Editor's Note: this post is a duplicate of the Substack post — imported into our Dark Forest space).