This Master-Planned Community Comes With a Catch—Don’t Be a Jerk

In August, Karryn and Elya Kurnosoff, both 33, and their two young children, moved into a brand-new house in their hometown of Hesperia, California, a city of 100,000 in San Bernardino County. Elya, a union carpenter and Karryn, a homemaker, wanted the amenities and structure of a master-planned community. "We were actually house hunting in developments in Utah, in March," says Karryn. "But we found Silverwood and thought it offered something similar."

They’re among the first residents in a $7 billion project expected to produce upward of 15,000 homes on a 9,000-plus acre site over the next two decades. Homes are now listed from the low $400,000s—comparable to the area’s median home prices, and less than half the state’s—to above $700,000. As marketed, Silverwood encourages an active lifestyle, nearly 400 acres of parks, 59 miles of off-street trails, and easy access to Silverwood Lake, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the surrounding mountains.

But there is a catch: Don’t be a jerk.

Silverwood advertises itself as a "community of kindness" with members obliged to sign a pledge when they purchase a home. "There will be homes, community centers, schools, parks, but most importantly, there will be kindness," says project general manager John Ohanian, of DMB Development. "A culture of kindness is being designed into the fabric of the community to create an enclave where residents can overcome external chaos and thrive by working together."

The pledge’s tenets read a little like the Ten Commandments, or what you might find in a kindergarten classroom—in other words, basic human decency: "Embrace listening to others, even when we disagree," reads one line. "Seek to exclude words that hurt and divide," states another. The idea of kindness—as currency, a marketable commodity—may raise some eyebrows, but is certainly subject to perspective. Ohanian describes his: "We see what’s going on in the world today…the acrimony and disconnect that maybe started with Covid, and there wasn’t much sense of community. And stuff going on politically—you know, ‘I don’t like you because you’re red, or because you’re blue.’ When you engage on a person-to-person level, you can get to a place of tolerance and acceptance."

Karryn Kurnosoff agrees. "Especially with what’s been happening the last few days, people need to be reminded to be courteous and kind," she said on September 12, two days after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah. "Even if it may be sad that we seem to need it, to be reminded we can be different and still get along."

Ohanian, who has been involved in the Silverwood project since the land was acquired in 2012, conjured the kindness theme a few years back. He says he was inspired by reading Brad Aronson’s 2020 book, HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act at a Time, and by his friend, former Anaheim mayor Tom Tait, who campaigned partly on a platform to advance "a city of kindness" initiative in 2010. In Ohanian’s view, that program, which took effect in 2016, reduced homelessness while increasing rehabilitative treatment, boosted police morale, and engaged the faith community. The idea for the program was a major part of the reason why the Dalai Lama visited the city in 2015, attracting international attention.

No, decency cannot be enforced at Silverwood and residents won’t be fined for foul moods. How do you really mandate a virtue, anyway? (Incidentally, when asked, Ohanian said the development is not affiliated with any religious organization.) "This is all aspirational," Ohanian says. "If Mrs. Smith’s trash cans are on the street for a few days, I’m not going to call the HOA on her. I’ll put them away for her or even check to see if everything’s okay. If you do those things, it makes you feel better, sparks something in your own heart, and creates a better environment that makes us all healthier and safer."

Build it and they will come

As the master-planned project unfolds, five national builders will be constructing seven different product types ranging from 1,550 to 3,500 square feet. Each product line will have three or four floor plans, some with multigenerational layouts or backyard casitas. The plans will have three to four elevations "…to create distinction in each neighborhood," says Ohanian.

The Kurnosoffs purchased their 2,099 square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bath home (plan four from the Lennar "Journey" series) for $456,000. "That was the base price and we bought early, back in April, so it’s definitely not that anymore," says Karryn. The place is on a cul-de-sac with two other families on the street so far. Karryn says the sidewalks are nice and well-maintained, and she’s looking forward to being able to walk the kids to the park on the other side of their neighbor’s house when it is completed in late 2025.

In contrast, in the outside local market, Ohanian says "houses in the Mojave River Valley area may be priced similarly but are either on larger lots or in isolated communities, some of which don’t have sidewalks."

At Silverwood, along with trailheads and pocket parks within a five-minute walk of every home, he says neighborhoods will be anchored by "village greens with an amphitheater or some stage functionality, so you can have concerts, movie nights, Christmas lighting, and spring festivals where neighbors can gather and connect." There are also plans for about 700,000 square feet of retail and commercial space over the project’s lifespan, with a first grocery store–anchored shopping center anticipated in three years.

Currently there are about two dozen families living at Silverwood, including Jessica and Dylan Kelley and their three small kids. Dylan, 32, is a commercial refrigeration company service manager. Jessica, 34, is a stay-at-home mom and part-time student. They went with a 2,400-square-foot, four-bed, three-bath home (a "Foster by Richmond American" model) for $524,900, and moved in on September 16.

"A lot of the houses we were looking at locally were in really bad neighborhoods or were just pretty horrible," says Dylan. "It wouldn’t have been a good fit for the kids," adds Jessica. They had told their parents they wanted a neighborhood where they could make friends, ride bikes, and go for walks all while feeling safe. "That changed everything for us," says Dylan. "It wasn’t just about finding a bigger house but finding the right lifestyle for our family."

Welcome to the neighborhood

Of course, developers have been packaging and selling similar iterations of the "American dream" for generations—often more with exclusion than tolerance in mind. The privatization of community life outside cities began before World War II but accelerated afterward, driven by car culture and the housing demand created by veterans with GI-backed loans. A prototype for mass-produced suburban housing, Levittown, New York, was built between 1947 and 1951. Demand often outpaced supply, but the project churned out homes like Ford factories, providing affordable housing to thousands of families while mirroring the era’s discriminatory government standards. Earlier and later developments alike featured explicit covenants excluding minorities; redlining was routine, and coded language fueled white flight from urban cores.

Although overtly discriminatory practices have long been outlawed, income and de facto racial segregation persist. Large, planned communities often segregate housing by price, distinguishing high-end neighborhoods from starter-home sections, though some are conceived to foster diversity and pluralism. Regardless, standards enforced by HOAs—private corporate entities with quasi-governmental oversight—help maintain these developments as "enclaves" that are physically, and often aesthetically, removed from their surroundings.

In the 1970s, an enterprising Michigan businessman started selling lots for properties at a central Florida mobile home park through the mail. This endeavor evolved into the Villages—"Florida’s Friendliest Hometown"—which has grown into what is often called the largest gated retirement community in the world. Andrew Blechman’s 2008 book, Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children, offers an outsider’s look at the massive age-restricted community with its own newspaper, radio, and TV stations, now more than 50 golf courses, and a vast array of social, recreational, and extracurricular activities. The Boston Globe praised it as "a perceptive analysis of the social, economic, and political implications of segregated, privatized living."

"Themes" have been increasingly concocted to promote "lifestyle" or celebrate niche cultural motifs to target population subsets, like Latitude Margaritaville, a trio of age-restricted communities geared toward Jimmy Buffett fans. Such branding seems to turn the concept of "community" into something more akin to country club memberships or cruise ship tours.

For its part, DMB Development has mostly focused on upscale communities, with a portfolio that includes a Disney-themed planned community project where some homes cost more than $7 million; the development triggered "…a series of lawsuits against the city of Rancho Mirage, related to the displacement of marginalized and low-income families," according to SFGATE.

Silverwood itself will include some higher-end "executive housing" on larger lots as well as an age-restricted, 55-and-over section with about 3,000 units of housing. But the development is clearly a departure for the company as it aims to target younger homebuyers. "The biggest chunk in the real estate market is young millennials and we sort of ignored them over the years," says Ohanian. "We recognize there’s a significant need for quality housing at the entry level and wanted to put the DMB ‘lifestyle’ component into a more affordable and attainable product."

For the past 13 years, Ohanian has been involved in everything from entitlement and public hearings to design, construction control, finance, and marketing. While the process has taken time, he says working with the business-friendly city "has been relatively seamless." But the proposed development did, in fact, prompt litigation around environmental reviews as it will impact habitat for the iconic western Joshua tree, a candidate for state endangered species protection. City residents, too, expressed concern over increases in traffic and crime.

According to Ohanian, "Hesperia is very forward-thinking and concerned about how [Silverwood] fits in with the larger community. They also realize the housing need."

Walking on air

Ohanian recognizes other industry experts could argue for different ways of creating cohesive communities. Indeed, efforts are growing to create housing models that form a sense of connection through density, walkability, access to amenities and public transportation, and more variety in building typologies.

"Americans are discovering the benefits of more compact, walkable neighborhoods," says Dan Parolek, urban designer, architect, and principal of Opticos Design, in Berkeley, California. His firm was involved in the Central Hercules District project in the Bay Area, which transformed "a 700-acre brownfield site in the middle of an auto-oriented, suburban community into a thriving urban downtown and a series of walkable urban neighborhoods," according to the American Planning Association. When complete, the project will have added nearly 1,400 housing units of various types, and 300,000 square feet of commercial, retail, and office space. "And this is all built by production builders so it’s a really great, replicable model," says Parolek.

Opticos Design also helped create Culdesac Tempe in Arizona, which Dwell covered in early 2025, a rental community on 17 acres adjacent to a light rail platform that is billed as the "nation’s first car-free neighborhood." Tenants get free transit passes, enjoy on-site amenities such as a restaurant and open-market events, and report a strong sense of community. "We’ve probably made more connections here in six months than when we lived in the suburbs for fifteen years," says one resident.

Plenty of less "extreme" but like-minded projects are proving their viability across the country. On a former military site in Orlando, Florida, for instance, Baldwin Park is a master-planned mixed-use community where more than 7,000 residents live in detached homes, townhomes, and apartments, all near shops, restaurants, bars, and offices. In Louisville, Kentucky, Norton Commons has added more than 1,300 homes—while preserving traditional regional architecture in a 600-acre setting with parks and green space—that are pedestrian-accessible to about 70 independently owned businesses, schools, and civic buildings. In Oklahoma City, the Wheeler District is a vibrant, mixed-use community developing on and around a former airport site along the Oklahoma River, and will add about 2,000 units of housing when finished.

"All of these provide walkability to neighborhood main streets with services and amenities, have streets specifically designed to be pedestrian-friendly, and include a mix of housing types," says Parolek, who wrote a book on "missing middle housing." In it, he describes the various building type mainstays in cities and towns in the early 20th century—from duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to cottage clusters and courtyard apartments—that accommodated people from all walks and stages of life.

Today, however, due to the high demand and low supply of this type of housing model, single-family homes in these compact neighborhoods are often priced higher than their local market counterparts. But Parolek says that diversifying building types will help produce more attainable living choices. He points to the fact that in Louisville’s Norton Commons, a 1,500-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath condo in a fourplex priced at $525,000 was integrated into the same block as $1.3-million-plus homes "that are not clustered and isolated, as they would normally be" in more conventional subdivisions.

"Today, as a starting point, the built form itself really needs to change to get to a compact walkable neighborhood, achieve true results, and give American households what they want, instead of just slightly better versions of suburbia," says Parolek.

The National Association of Realtors bears this out, reporting that a 2023 poll of 2,000 adults in the 50 largest cities found higher quality of life satisfaction in walkable communities. More than 30 percent of millennials and Gen Z respondents were willing to "pay a lot more" to live in such a community, and 53 percent of all respondents would prefer an "attached dwelling (apartment, condo, or townhome) rather than a detached single-family home" so long as they could walk to shops and restaurants.

Settling in

Obviously, there’s still demand for large, single-family home communities, and the Kurnosoffs are optimistic about theirs. "So far we really enjoy the scenic views and the quiet and friendly neighborhood," says Karryn. "Our kids have made friends with the neighbor’s kids and they all play outside together."

Ohanian is hopeful, too. He expects Silverwood will house 160 more families by year’s end, and several hundred more next year. And, with 35 years in real estate and more than 15 master-planned communities under his belt, Ohanian says Silverwood will likely be his last; he sees it as his way of paying it forward. "This may sound a little vain, but I wanted a legacy project where people will see it and say, ‘this place is different, they really put a different spin on things and tried harder to create a place where people can live together harmoniously and enjoy life,’" he says.

As it fills in over the years, time will tell if the community bears out as more substance than sales pitch, to become a paragon of decency, that proverbial city on a hill. Will future residents here honor their pledges? For now, at least, the idea seems to have a draw. "It’s few and far between with the kindness anymore," says Silverwood resident Dylan Kelley. "To think the kids will grow up with that is nice."

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