Choose your neighbors — homes designed around friendship

The core mechanic

Not membership housing. A living map.

Co-ops and cohousing fill vacancies as they come, and a board decides who gets in. Choose Neighbors runs on a dynamic map instead — you ask to live near your people, space is deliberately kept open so your group can grow, and anyone can move — to other people, or other areas — at any time. Four moving parts:

01You choose, by application

Through a simple matching app you ask to live near friends — or people whose ideas and energy you share. Groups can choose other groups.

02Room is always kept free

A share of space is deliberately held open, so when a friend wants to join you — or you want to move closer to someone — there's actually somewhere to go. The piece every other model is missing.

03You can move, freely

You own your home and sell back at a fair formula, so moving is never a financial trap. Shift toward new friends, or away from friction, whenever you like.

04A map placed by who you know

A nearest-neighbours system positions people close to those they chose — the layout reflects real bonds, not the accident of who signed a lease first.

This was always designed as a program — and AI now makes it practical. The matching, the map, the held-open space, homes swapping as neighbours and budgets change: what once needed a bespoke system, a personal AI agent and today's models can actually run. As far as we can find, this combination doesn't exist anywhere else — here's the evidence file.

Read the full idea →The fragments →How to start →

Communities near you

Ohio, United States — compiled with AI, verify before visiting · see all & filter by type →

The Ridges — Community-strong neighbourhoods & councils, Athens
Twin Oaks Community — Intentional communities, Louisa
Yellow Springs Home, Inc. — Community-strong neighbourhoods & councils, Yellow Springs
Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics — Monasteries & religious stays, Maria Stein
St. Andrew Svorad Abbey — Monasteries & religious stays, Cleveland
Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat & Conference Center — Intentional communities, Detroit
The Village of St. Edward — Live-in care communities, Fairlawn
The Farm Community — Intentional communities, Summertown

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New people

Michael van Diermen

South Australia, Australia

joined 12 Jul 2026

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Community wall

Groups

Create or join a group to plan a street, a building, or a whole community together.

Why this matters

Belonging isn’t soft. It’s measurable.

The feeling that the people around you affect your health and how long you live turns out to be one of the most robust findings in modern science. The connection a community provides is, quite literally, preventive health.

+26%

higher risk of early death linked to loneliness

+29%

higher risk linked to social isolation

+32%

higher risk linked to living alone

The Harvard Study of Adult Development — running over 85 years — found that the quality of our relationships, more than money, fame, or even cholesterol, is the clearest predictor of long-term health and happiness. The US Surgeon General has placed the toll of weak social connection on a par with smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

The clenched state vs. the relaxed state — is it real?

Yes. The nervous system has two settings, and who’s nearby helps decide which one you live in. This is measured physiology, not metaphor.

The clench is vascular. Threat constricts peripheral blood vessels and tenses muscle; safety does the opposite. Biofeedback clinics use hand temperature as their relaxation gauge precisely because calm means blood flowing back out to the skin.
Isolation is a chronic clench. Lonely people carry higher vascular resistance and blood pressure even at rest — up to ~30 points — not only under stress. The body without trusted people nearby idles in low-grade vigilance.
Trusted people turn the threat system down. Social Baseline Theory: the brain budgets effort assuming trusted others are close — in the hand-holding experiments, threat activity dropped with a partner’s hand. Alone is not neutral; alone is the expensive setting.
Even imagined closeness registers. A photo of a loved one measurably reduces pain, and attachment figures act as safety signals — controlled against mere distraction.
Change the street, change the body. In the Moving to Opportunity randomized trial, families who moved to better neighbourhoods showed less depression and anxiety, half the diabetes rate, and 40% less extreme obesity.

Figures from Holt-Lunstad et al. meta-analyses (3.4M+ people); Harvard Study of Adult Development; US Surgeon General’s Advisory (2023); Cacioppo et al.; Coan et al.; Eisenberger et al.; Chetty, Hendren & Katz. Some researchers debate the exact size of the cigarette comparison, while agreeing the underlying risk is real and rising.

See the evidence → Do something about it →

The pitch

I've spent years in casual work, rooms I didn't choose, suburbs where seeing a friend takes a booking two weeks out. That isolation isn't a personal failing — it's how our places are built. So for thirty years I've been designing the fix, and I'm putting my own savings into it:

A place where you choose your neighbours, own your home at cost instead of renting, and always have something to do — with an AI helper that runs the boring parts and never rules. People choose their neighbours. That's all. Everything else is supplementary.

Why this can work — and why invest

The demand is enormous.

Housing unaffordability and loneliness are the two fastest-growing problems in the developed world. A place that fixes both doesn't need to advertise — it needs to exist.

The model protects the money.

Land and buildings hold value. Market-rate homes on one side fund the affordable core on the other; buyers repay at ~30% of income; nothing depends on speculation.

The work is already done.

Full designs, business plans, and a working matching app — built over decades, free to use. I'm committing $50,000+ of my own savings and future income, and my labour.

Ways it can start — pick a scale

The app first — groups form online, then move near each other One building — a hostel, hotel or monastery converted to owned rooms A caravan park — the cheapest owned homes there are A cheap or half-empty town — renovated at our own pace One street — homes bought as they come up, held for the group New blocks — common utilities, owners finish their own homes

What you get

As a resident

A home you own at ~30% of income, neighbours you chose, free homes held for your friends to join, and always something on.

As an investor

Property-backed returns from the market-rate side and construction margin — and first place in line as the model proves and repeats.

As a supporter

Every plan and line of code published open — your name on the piece you funded, and a working example other towns can copy.

Fund a piece of it

Donations go to a named piece, not a pot — the first starter room, the community hall kit, the app's next feature — and every dollar is publicly accounted for. Tell us which piece, or ask what's next on the list:

Invest or partner → Donate to a piece Join as a future resident

If any of it speaks to you — as a resident, builder, critic, or investor — say hello.

Guides & experiments

Start with the guides. Stay for the experiments.

Find a community near you → Monasteries, cohousing, co-ops, ecovillages — real places in your state, filterable by type. Start a community with your friends → The complete guide: gather your people, pick a scale, sort homes and money, make it last. Cohousing vs coliving → The honest map of the ways to live near people you choose — privacy, cost, ownership, time.

The plans

Experiments & working notes

We are not finished yet.