California Community Asks Residents To Sign A Kindness Pledge Before Moving In
Many people have been drawn to the community specifically because of the pledge.
MDV Edwards | Shutterstock It feels like kindness is in short supply in the world we live in. Everything is so fast-paced that no one really takes the time to stop and smile at a stranger or offer a compliment. The lack of kindness in the world led one development team to devise a new plan for a community. Instead of having a typical HOA with rules, they created a kindness pledge for residents to sign.
The community is still under development, but the kindness initiative seems to be working so far. Lots of people have been drawn to the neighborhood for this specific reason.. It seems like the promise of living somewhere where kindness is celebrated and respected is quite the incentive for home buyers.
The Silverwood community in California is drawing buyers in with the promise of kindness.
According to Kristine Lazar, who reported on the project for KCAL News, the new community is located in Hesperia, California, in San Bernardino County. The idea for the community would be quite ambitious even without the kindness pledge. It’s expected to cost $7 billion and take a decade to complete. The community will include 16,000 houses and 7 schools, as well as parks, trails, stores, and restaurants.
The kindness pledge has several points that residents must agree to, but Lazar summed it up fairly succinctly. “To live in Silverwood, one must foster empathy, acceptance, and tolerance; make a positive impact; embrace listening to others, and more,” she explained. John Ohanian, one of the developers working on the project, said that this will keep the community feeling like, well, a community.
Although Silverwood is still under construction, it has already attracted quite a few buyers.
All of those residents are eager to live somewhere where kindness is valued so highly. Brandon Hill purchased a home in the community and moved in at the end of the summer. “Well, I think it’s probably going to translate mostly to just getting involved,” he said. “Feeling like you can talk to your neighbors, hang out, go to the community center, know people.”
Another home in the community was bought by a mother-daughter duo that has the goal of getting to know their neighbors through the kindness initiative. Clair Smith said, “The plan was we all were going to move to Texas, and then when we came and saw this new development, we just fell in love and we decided we’re going to stay.”
Ohanian assured prospective homeowners that there wouldn’t be a strict HOA enforcing kindness rules, which wouldn’t be very kind at all, when you think about it. Instead, it’s up to the residents to create the kind of community they want to live in with the kindness pledge to guide them.
Even though it seems like our world is lacking in kindness, it’s more present than we think.
BBC Radio 4 and the University of Sussex teamed up to create the Kindness Test, the largest survey in the world on the subject. 16% of participants said that they had experienced an act of kindness within the last hour, while 43% said it happened to them in the last day. These statistics are encouraging, given how bleak the world seems to be these days.
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Survey participants also said they were most likely to help others when they were asked directly. It’s certainly a kind thing to do to help someone when they ask for it, but the Silverwood experiment seems to go beyond that. Residents are encouraged to be proactive about kindness and let it guide the way they act instead of taking a backseat.
There’s no such thing as too much kindness. Any effort to make the world a kinder place is one that should be appreciated. Silverwood developers and homeowners are taking kindness seriously, and they are making a better world in the process. Your community doesn’t have to adopt a formal kindness pledge for you to follow their example, though.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
