"Workforce housing is not a favor to outsiders. It is part of the civic infrastructure of the town itself."

Volume I: The Fragile State of a Beautiful Place

The first volume of The Yountville Moon follows one small town as it confronts a question many communities are beginning to face: how do you preserve what people love about a place while ensuring there is still room for more of the people who sustain it?

Read in order, these essays move from the ideals communities seek to protect, through the unintended consequences of those choices, toward the deeper question that still remains unresolved.

1. Preserved in Amber

What European villages can teach us about beauty, continuity, and adaptation.

2. Fragile State of Yountville’s Workforce Housing

A beautiful place can become more vulnerable than it appears, especially when the systems that sustain everyday life grow increasingly strained.

3. The Scarcity Yountville Built

How decades of understandable decisions gradually created a housing shortage no one intended.

4. Where the Workers Were Counted

The studies existed. The numbers were known. The need was documented.

5. The Town That Misplaced Its Children

An elementary school closes after more than a century, raising questions about who can still build a life in Yountville.

6. The Story the Local Press Missed

Why a single council meeting obscured a much larger civic story years in the making.

7. One Question I Cannot Stop Asking

The debate over housing revealed a deeper question about who belongs in small towns.

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Vol II: The Commons Explained

Volume I explored the condition. Vol 2: The Commons Explained examines one proposed response: what it was, how it evolved, and why reasonable people reached different conclusions about it.