Neighbors: The Power of the People Next Door

In Neighbors: The Power of the People Next Door, author Brenda Krause Eheart tells the story of Hope Meadows, the first intergenerational planned community in which seniors commit to intentional neighboring as a way to provide support to families seeking to adopt children out of foster care.Neighbors is a deeply personal story etched with Eheart’s compassion for all people in need. Her frustration with broken social service programs and policies that fail to address these needs began in the1980’s, and her determination to offer solutions that strengthen—and humanize—our social safety net is the mission of this book. Eheart was impacted not only by the children in foster care who were failed by existing systems of care, but also by her mother who lived in a memory care facility for the last years of her life; by the struggling families she worked with, whose poverty was the baseline for every other indignity in their lives; by the daughter of a dear friend who lost her battle with mental illness, and by the young, nonverbal adult with profound autism whose primary companionship beyond his aging parents are paid care providers. Across a career spanning over 30 years, there are many more.In Hope Meadows, Eheart imagined a solution that could help us all—then and now—creating a radical new approach to solving social problems by transforming the idea of an old-fashioned, close-knit neighborhood into a purposeful intervention and ultimately a way of life for everyone. Neighbors tells the stories of Hope Meadows residents as they unfolded over nearly two decades, stories that chronicle the profound ways in which three critical shifts in thinking—changing how we view family, how we view vulnerability, and how we view older adults—informed their relationships, and transformed their lives.Pervasive stress and angst in our culture have awakened a hunger in all of us for good news stories. Neighbors addresses this cultural longing for meaning and hope in a complex world, and it provides readers with the insights and tools necessary to make a positive difference around the issues of their own lives. It is a timely book, focusing on the need for all people to be active makers of change, and it is a hopeful book, offering a prescription for bringing ordinary people together to address our most complex social problems by doing what government, business, and social services were never designed to do—foster caring relationships.Neighbors is a practical book, allowing us to imagine living in a diverse community where caring neighbors tackle some of our nation’s most complex social challenges facing children, families, and those near the end of their lives; where those who are vulnerable are also valued community members who participate and contribute; and where daily the lives of older adults are filled with meaning and purpose. In today’s world this vision seems impossible, a fantasy. But Neighbors is no fantasy: it provides a credible vision of the lost and perhaps squandered power of everyday people to unite us and make us whole.