We nominate John Abrams, whose career has been dedicated to sustainable housing and creating a cooperative corporate structure, and whose plans for retirement — also focused on housing affordability and worker cooperatives — are keeping him busier than ever.
John Abrams, the storied founder of South Mountain Company, retired last year. But retirement for John Abrams looks nothing like the ads on television, just as the company he founded with a friend in 1975 came to bear little resemblance to one with a standard corporate structure. Rather, South Mountain adopted a cooperative model — where employees own the company they work for. But that’s the thing about Abrams: He’s not your typical guy. And so none of what he does is, well, typical.
Instead, over the almost fifty years he’s been on this Island, Abrams has consistently reimagined the company he helped create and the community in which he’s made a home in extraordinary ways that will reverberate for generations to come.
Abrams spoke with Bluedot Living in February from his home on the Vineyard.
On getting his start
“I believe in trying things, and it’s fun for me to try things, even if they fail, because they don’t fail forever.” He laughs when he talks of his early days with South Mountain: “We had this mentor who loved our work. Every summer, he’d come and we’d go around, and one time, he said, you know, the work is beautiful, are you making any money? And I said no, we pretty much lose money on everything we do. And he said, you have a really unique idea of subsidized housing for the rich. And that was like a dagger to my heart. And I decided at that point that I wanted to learn about business.”
On building
In his 20s, Abrams lived in a commune in Vermont. It was there, he says, that he learned the basics of building: “We didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We learned to build because we were living in these communes in remote places, and just had to learn how to put a roof over our heads. It became a passion for me. I just started designing and building by the seat of my pants, and learned gradually.”
On social entrepreneurship
“I’ve committed [to] helping companies become worker cooperatives, … When workplaces democratize, the employee learns the tools of community activism and collaborative practices. That, in turn, impacts the community and the issues that are important to the community.
On housing
“We have to do two essential things at once — we’ve got to house our workforce, and we’ve got to tame the short-term rental scourge. Our existing buildings have to be brought into the 21st century and kept in local ownership. … Really, what the housing issue is all about [is] people conservation, conserving the community. So there’s land conservation, there’s community preservation as well.”
Really, what the housing issue is all about [is] people conservation, conserving the community. So there’s land conservation, [and] there’s community preservation as well.
On the Housing Bank
“We are basically shipping up to Boston, for the next two months,” Abrams says about his work on the proposed housing bank legislation, and the efforts to organize Vineyarders to head to Boston to encourage legislators to enact the bill. “I’m proud of all of us,” he says about the dynamic mix of people, young and old, who have come together over the last few years to develop the legislation that would enable revenue collected from real estate transfers to create more affordable housing on the Island. “We’ll use that money for existing dwellings, with super high [environmental] standards. “[It] is going to end up being a statewide initiative, and affordable housing is such a crisis in all the places where people actually want to live, it’s not like [just] the Vineyard and Nantucket. It’s all over this country.”
On being a positive force
For Abrams, the Vineyard is “kind of like a laboratory. And so the learning … has come from working in this community, and doing public initiatives, and building a business that really serves the community and its employees. Those lessons learned locally have a wider application. … Business is the most powerful force in the world — the one that has the potential to change the world most completely and quickly due to its lack of constraints. South Mountain demonstrates, as do other 6,500 B-Corps, how business can be, if it chooses to, a force for good in all those arenas.”
On Gen Z
“I see Gen Z as our greatest hope … and I’m an eternal optimist. Despite what we see on the news, the world has become a better place in the time that I’ve been alive. And I think that will continue. And I think this started with Occupy [Wall Street], when people became conscious that wealth is being concentrated in the [top] 1%. I don’t think that was even on the radar screen before that. I don’t think we’re going to live with that forever — that is going to change. It was Gen Z [who started it all]. So I want to fight with them.”
On challenges
“When I arrived on the Vineyard, it was a very different place than it is today. Zoning was brand new, as was the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, [and] the Land Bank didn’t exist. Solar was the realm of the backyard experimenter and NASA; there was no commercial solar industry. Affordable housing wasn’t an issue, cheap land was available, family properties could be divided, you could build a shack in the woods. And climate change was not recognized as an issue. It was such a different time. It feels to me like the biggest change over the past half century is the emergence of climate change as the existential issue of our times.”
On what’s constant, and what’s next
Abrams describes the business he’s moved on to since his retirement from South Mountain (where he remains on the board of directors). He and his partner, Kim Angell, who for two decades owned Vineyard Tax Matters, have launched a consulting firm. They’ll help people on-Island and beyond with worker-ownership transitions, financial literacy, business operations, leadership development, and community activism.
And there’s family.
“So I have two kids, both of whom are on the Vineyard, and six grandchildren. All grandsons. Wow. All of them except one lives here … And so Kim [who has three kids] and I have spent the last two years merging these two sprawling families. And it’s been quite the adventure.”
On making a difference
“Figure out where your passion really is, and put your time in that passion. Do something small that feels important. And … celebrate modest successes. We don’t have to change big things — we only have to change little things. If a lot of people change little things, that adds up over time.”
