Melvin N. Leasure Community Growth Fund
Formally BWOB (Buildings With Out Banks)

What is "Mel's Growth Fund"?
The history of this committee comes from our Land Trust work. Mel Leasure founder of Common Ground Community in Lexington, Virginia and past president of School of Living, believed that we needed to have a fund to assist those on the land to enable future growth.

Many communities living on Land Trust land met with much resistance from banks when trying to obtain loans for construction or remodeling of buildings. The banks are used to getting Fee simple Deeds to hold as collateral on construction loans. We have been able to get the loans people need through the banks if they otherwise qualify, but we have had to put land at risk in the event of foreclosure in several instances, and that grates against our philosophical nerves. All our Land holdings are bound by ecological and educational restrictions that our volunteer land committee members have carefully drafted to suit each piece of land in the trust. All that is out the window if the land is foreclosed to repay a loan. Bummer!

What we needed was an in house fund that would meet the immediate construction needs of our people without having to go through the banks, right? Enter our Fairy GodFather. Mel Leasure, swept out his financial broom closet and dropped $17,000 seed money on SOL to establish the loan fund.

There followed a general pandemonium of cheering and a great rush of folks to attend the first formative meetings of the committee. Of course, once people realized that we have to do a lot of work in the "How, Who, and Why," departments before we can put out any loans, attendance dropped considerably.

Wait, Come back, we need help!
The self selected faithful few have been struggling along with developing application forms and form letters and basic philosophy issues, and priority lists and such.

Our previously acclaimed Fairy God Father, Mel, has led a series of discussions in the committee and in the School of Living in general on interest as usury. You may have seen some of the basic ideas we are working with in articles in the past. So the current sentiments of the BWOB committee are to keep interest payments to an absolute minimum, which means that loaning the money we have, out, is not a good way to make it grow.

On the other hand we need more money.

So all you people out there that are use to thinking about financial stuff; all you single taxers, and alternative currency folks, helped us to think this through. How do we take $17,000 and turn it into $150,000 in 10 years or less without charging interest beyond inflation, administrative costs, and a bit to hedge our bets in case of uncollectible (bad) loans?

We can invest it, but then we take the interest someone else charges and there we are with interest/usury money again. So, lets have some feed back on this, please. By the way, the committee is still seeking members.

$17,000, that's great! ... But it's not enough!
As I see this thing, we need at least $150,000 to make it work, more if we can manage it. At today's rates people need a substantial amount of money to make it possible to build comfortable housing. If our applicants have some savings, are willing to live in a shell, or build module houses and add on as the money becomes available, we could make small loans, have several outstanding, have enough to take applications, and keep enough back to handle any administrative stuff, (in other words, have a viable loan fund) at $150,000. Any less and we can only make one or two loans and/or the loans will be so small that it will not meet the need. So, we need other sources of money.

We have people in place on SOL Land Trust land, (almost by definition visionaries) who are living in temporary housing, spending time fixing that temporary housing. People who could be getting on with the business of building permanent ecologically sound homes that will tie them to the land and to all our dreams of sustainable community, if they could get relatively small loans from us at reasonable rates. Dealing with banks for money to build houses, as you know ends up costing the householder triple the actual cost of the house. How are people supposed to spend the time it takes to reshape the very core of their culture, if they have to spend that time making money to pay three times the value of their homes, just to get permanent shelter on site in a reasonable amount of time?

Now is your chance to make a difference, help the Land Trust get over a very fundamental stumbling block. Get our people out of those energy draining temporary shelters and into sustainable housing! Save our ecological and educational restrictions! Show those bankers they can't tie us in to their usury system!

So ...  what about the name change

At the October 2006 meeting, hosted by Julian Woods, much discussion took place about the unattractive name of the committee. What better way to improve the name than to honor the man who created the fund. So in behalf of Mel the BWOB's committee is now

Melvin N. Leasure Community Growth Fund.

For more information on how you can help contact:

Melvin N. Leasure Community Growth Fund
c/o School of Living
215 Julian Woods Lane
Julian, PA 16844

or call: 814/353-0130

* Basically, in gross over simplification the practice of charging interest in excess of labor (administrative costs), inflation, and some percent to cover uncollectible loans for the use of idle money is a major contributing factor toward the shortage of real goods in relation to existing money which is such a stumbling block to the search for a more harmonious way to relate to living.