MONKTON — Talking with members of Monkton’s Riverflow Community about their first year up and running, there’s a word that comes up often — transformative.

The intentional community for individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities opened its doors at 57 Cedar Lane in October 2024. It’s a place for all community members to live, work and navigate life together. Members of the community say being part of Riverflow has changed their lives for the better.

“Riverflow has transformed the (resident) friends’ life profoundly — transforms the families whose adult children come to live here, it transforms all the people who work here, and it transforms the people who donate to Riverflow,” said Elizabeth Campbell, whose son Jesse has Down Syndrome Regression Disorder and is among Riverflow’s four founding residents, or friends.

“It’s a circle that just gets wider and wider and wider, in a good way,” she continued.

That circle is preparing to get even bigger, as the Riverflow team is working to welcome more people into the community with the construction of a second home on the property and additional residences down the road.

“It’s very special to be here at a time when the community is just one house,” said Seneca Gonzalez, co-householder of Riverflow’s first home and a member of the board of directors. “You get to really live into the space, and thinking about more people coming, that’s what makes it community.”

FIRST YEAR

When the Riverflow Community opened in 2024, it marked the culmination of years of work and advocating at the state level. Campbell had joined many other parents in pushing the state to expand housing options for Vermonters with intellectual and developmental disabilities beyond a “shared living” model likened to adult foster care, where providers are compensated for supporting one or two individuals with developmental disabilities.

Those efforts led to the creation of Act 186 in 2022, a law that in part developed a position within the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living to help expand housing options for Vermonters with developmental disabilities. It also provided pilot grants to support the creation of alternative housing models, one of which was awarded to Campbell and Waitsfield residents Amy and Jim Caffry to help found Riverflow.

Over time, the team grew to include board members, staff, volunteers, founding friends, and householders who maintain Riverflow’s first therapeutic home, called Willow House. Together and with support from donors, state organizations and community members, they worked to form the nonprofit and revitalize the eight-bedroom Willow House along with the 30-acre property it sits on.

Walking through Willow House offers a glimpse into daily life at Riverflow. One room has become a spot for needle felting, stocked with supplies and community members’ vibrant creations. The basement has been transformed into a woodshop and candle-making space, with a home gym also in the works.

Outside, a farm is beginning to take shape. A three-sided pole barn marks the first building constructed toward that vision and is expected to house sheep in the spring. Community members also tend to a chicken coop on the property.

Life at Riverflow largely follows a weekly routine that offers community members stability.

“The thing about that is it puts the nervous system at ease, and so then there’s not this constant kind of wondering and on edge of ‘when is that thing happening?’— they know,” Gonzalez explained.

Gonzalez noted that building such a rhythm is a core value of the Camphill Movement, an international social change initiative focused on creating life sharing, therapeutic communities where individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities live, work with and care for one another. Riverflow has been inspired by the Camphill Movement.

MEMBERS OF MONKTON’S Riverflow Community often take part in activities like woodworking and needle felting, and have created the pieces displayed here.
Independent photo/Marin Howell

While the weekly routine offers a stabilizing foundation, a person-centered approach to daily activities and other parts of life at Riverflow allows community members to move through each day however is best for them.

“Within that very stable rhythm that’s kind of like this heartbeat, this pulse that’s holding everybody, there’s this individualizing, too,” said Hannah Schwartz, Riverflow’s executive director.

It’s a way of life that reaps benefits for all community members, including residential coworkers like Valor Marsh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place where I’ve been so settled and happy,” Marsh said.

Campbell said the rhythm of life at Riverflow has been beneficial for her son Jesse.

“This environment is, for the first time in Jesse’s life, a rhythm that resonates with his special needs,” she said.

She said Riverflow has also made a difference in her life and that of Jesse’s brother.

“For families like mine, and the three other families who have children here at Riverflow, the whole family is transformed,” she said. “It’s just life-changing for the siblings to know that the responsibility for their sibling with intellectual disability is being carried by a community and not just the family.”

It’s a comfort many families of Vermonters with intellectual and developmental disabilities are still seeking as they look for housing options for their children. An open house at Riverflow this past May welcomed around 200 people into Willow House, many of whom were families of and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“They are desperate for what Riverflow provides,” Campbell said.

Members of the Riverflow community hope it can serve as an example of what’s possible.

“All of these intentional community models the state has been scaling to say, ‘How can we meet the need,’ and I hope they invest in communities like Riverflow,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz noted the state has been helpful in creating Riverflow, which completed phase one of plans for the community debt free thanks in part to support from the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, VLITE, and the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board, along with private donations.

PLANS FOR GROWTH

The team is now headed into phase two of building the Riverflow community, which calls for constructing a road on the property and the addition of another home. Future plans also include building small cottages, a barn and a community center at the site.

Riverflow is working to raise around $1.7 million to support phase two, and more information can be found at riverflowcommunity.org.

Schwartz and her team are working through permitting and hope to get started on phase two projects in the spring. Riverflow is looking to work with Huntington Homes, a custom modular homes manufacturer, on the second house. That house will allow Riverflow to add more householders and four new friends to the community.

If all goes to plan, Riverflow will welcome those new community members by early 2027. Schwartz said the team has already done trial visits with and met the four friends that will be joining Riverflow.

As they look forward to growth on the horizon, the Riverflow team joyfully reflected on the community that’s been built over the past 15 months. They credited the donors, community members and organizations who have helped make Riverflow a reality.

“It’s amazing what has happened in a short amount of time,” Campbell said. “We have a lot of fundraising ahead of us, but we have such goodwill surrounding the community.”

“And such generosity,” Schwartz added. “We’ve really been supported, and I do feel Vermont is really behind us.”