Imagine living in a city built on kindness, where residents are encouraged to respect one another and not judge their neighbors.
“It’s really important to us,” Ohanian told The Epoch Times. “The idea is to create some expectations of how we’re all going to live together.”
The nearly 15-square-mile development is located in Hesperia, California, on state Route 138 near the Cajon Pass in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 75 miles east of Los Angeles.
The project will offer homes built around active outdoor lifestyles and priced from the mid-$400,000s up to the $700,000s. The community will also have five elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school, according to plans.
“We’re trying to create a special place for folks to live that embraces an outdoor lifestyle and is community oriented,” Ohanian said.
He said the housing will be more attainable for Californians who can’t afford Los Angeles and Orange County.
“We’re trying very hard to articulate a lifestyle that is family oriented, allowing young families to be able to stay in California and afford to live here,” Ohanian said.
Silverwood residents will also pay $158 a month in homeowner association fees, but these will provide connections to full-gig speed internet, which is 10 times faster than older cable connections, according to the developer.
Ohanian said he was inspired to build a community of kindness after hearing that Tom Tait, former mayor of Anaheim, California, had developed a “Kindness Initiative,” after he took office in 2010. The city officially made “kindness” its motto in 2017.
Silverwood might be just the kind of city the former mayor was hoping to inspire.
Tait said he thinks designing Silverwood around kindness will create a safer community.
“If you could create a culture of kindness and increase the kind acts, and the chance of having kind acts, then literally everything you think of gets better,” Tait told The Epoch Times. “Why wouldn’t you want to design something to build that up?”
Many builders design projects for physical infrastructure, but Silverwood is designed for the social infrastructure, he said.
People are also safer and better prepared for emergencies when they look after their neighbors, he said.
“People are just happier when they live in a community where they know their neighbors and their neighbors know them,” Tait said.
In this spirit, Silverwood’s homeowner association will offer residents who buy one of their nearly 15,700 homes a chance to sign a pledge promising to be kind.
“We’re trying to make it feel like people have a voice, and have an opportunity to also be respected, not judged, and treated kindly,” Ohanian said. “It sets an expectation and we hope everybody who becomes a homeowner signs a pledge.”
Kindness won’t be enforced, but Ohanian said he hopes peer pressure and conscience will drive residents to enforce the idea themselves.
The project has been in the works since 2012, when the developer purchased the land out of a bankruptcy. The southern edge of the property was a working cattle ranch and will remain open space.
The lower cost of the land is part of what will allow the developer to offer more affordable houses. The homes will range from 1,400-square-foot, one-story condos close to the town’s center, to 4,000-square-foot executive homes at the higher end.
“Silverwood will create the opportunity for thousands of families to live in a gorgeous natural setting with endless opportunities for outdoor recreation, all within a reasonable commute to San Bernardino, Riverside, Ontario, and other existing employment hubs,” according to the project’s website.
The development will also build a wastewater treatment facility that will allow the association to use recycled water for all parks and schools. Half of the houses will also be designed to offer homeowners the ability to use recycled water for irrigation and landscaping, according to the developer.
The project is planned to include eight villages, each with its own theme and anchored by a green space. One might be built around pickleball courts, while another might have a swimming complex, according to the developer.
“Each village will have its own neighborhood identity and each of them will have its own character,” Ohanian said.
The community will also have its own medical services, grocery stores, and other services, he added.
People will be able to gather at the pools, recreational facilities, bandstands, and other areas, according to the developer. Nearly half of the land in the development has been set aside for natural open space, conservation easement, parks, and the Serrano Preserve.
The project is expected to include 59 miles of off-street trails, 107 miles of paths and paseos, and 387 acres of parks. Every house will be within a five-minute walk of a park, according to plans.
Silverwood Lake is on the southern boundary of the property, and Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear are about an hour away.
Model homes at the development should be open in the spring of 2025, Ohanian said. He expects to have people living in the community between April and June.
Home builders include Lennar, Richmond American Homes, Watt Capital Developers, and Woodside Homes.
The developer expects to take up to 20 years to completely build out the community.
