Amid an exodus of outpriced Californians fleeing the Golden State in search of affordable housing and intentional community, a sprawling neighborhood development in the heart of the Inland Empire is aiming to keep them home and inject a multibillion-dollar boost into the local economy.
The team behind Silverwood, a master-planned 9,000-acre residential community located in Hesperia, spent the last year generating buzz for its low-for-California home prices as well as its kindness pledge — a document that all residents are required to sign.
“I can’t tell you the number of times residents have stopped me and said how much they appreciate the idea and the way it is being lived out,” John Ohanian, general manager of Silverwood, told Business Insider. “If this is our legacy at Silverwood, I will be so proud.”
The neighborhood has proved a popular alternative for Californians seeking greener pastures. Silverwood sold more than 40 homes in its first two weeks after officially opening in April 2025, Ohanian said. Since then, sales have climbed to 225 properties as of June 2026.
“The first year was a success,” Ohanian said. “We had strong community engagement, experienced strong buyer interest, and made our place despite no softening in the mortgage market and general economic ups and downs.”
The development team estimates that 300 families will call Silverwood home by the end of the year. Ohanian said the neighborhood aims to add 500-700 households a year thereafter, totaling more than 15,000 homes over the life of the project. There are also school sites, three fire stations, 380 acres of park space, and more than 160 miles of trails.
A community grounded in kindness
Ohanian had been eyeing the land on which Silverwood now sits for years before purchasing it in 2012. He and his team spent more than a decade planning, designing, and eventually building the development.
“This property is surrounded by the mountains. You can see Big Bear on one side and a lovely panorama of mountains on the other,” he told Business Insider. “It wants to be an outdoor lifestyle kind of community.”
Ohanian said the team wanted to create the kind of small-town California neighborhood that he remembers from his own childhood. Inspired by former Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait’s kindness campaign, Ohanian instituted a pledge encouraging residents to foster empathy, acceptance, and tolerance, which all Silverwood employees, partners, subcontractors, and residents must sign to be part of the community.
Mother-and-daughter residents Tracy Smith and Clair Mattig-Smith moved into the neighborhood in November and said they immediately started seeing the kindness pledge in action.
“My mom and I decided to buy gifts for all the neighbors on our street during the holidays,” Mattig-Smith told Business Insider. “We dropped them off, and then three days later, all our neighbors did the same. We started a trend.”
An affordable and accessible oasis
Between 2024 and 2025, about 216,000 Californians left the state, according to California Department of Finance data, with several people citing rising costs as their driving reason. Housing prices, in particular, have driven scores of native Californians from their home to states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
That exodus was on Ohanian’s mind as he oversaw the development of Silverwood. Houses in the community start in the $400,000s and go up to nearly $800,000s.
“There hasn’t really been an opportunity for people like this,” Ohanian said of Silverwood’s affordable home prices. “Californians feel like they can go to Texas and pay $400,000 for a house or go to Orange County and pay $1 million.”
“In bringing a product to market that’s desirable in price point, we hope we’ll get people to start thinking about what California used to be like,” he added.
The mix of affordability and intentional community is what sparked Mattig-Smith’s interest in Silverwood last year. The 42-year-old mother of four had been planning to move her household, including her 67-year-old mother, Smith, from Apple Valley, California, to Texas in search of a lower cost of living and a stronger sense of community.
“I feel like life in general is a little slower in Texas,” Mattig-Smith told Business Insider. “It seems like there’s more community, and people actually know their neighbors.”
Cultivating a California community
Silverwood’s builders are conscientious about building a community that reflects California’s unique makeup, Ohanian said.
“We would love it to be a community that’s pretty diverse in terms of ethnicity,” he told Business Insider. “We generally believe that leads to a better fabric for life.”
Thus far, Silverwood residents include many young families with young kids, as well as several retirees and Valley transplants, Ohanian said.
Smith said she loves to sit on her front porch and watch the different families and residents who have become her neighbors, including retired couples, young families, and other multi-generational households.
Several builders partnering with the community offer multi-gen products, such as houses with outdoor casitas or internal apartments. The focus on multi-gen living was another draw for Mattig-Smith and her mother.
“The idea of having a multigenerational homefront where we’re all together was so nice. It’s amazing to watch my grandkids grow from babies into adulthood,” Smith told Business Insider.
Ohanian said a couple of families have bought houses in Silverwood right next door to one another. Watching the first residents moving in was a full-circle moment.
“It was almost 13 years since we purchased the land before we finally got to greet our first residents,” Ohanian said.
Silverwood held a summer celebration last June for everyone who had bought a home, gathering new residents on the village green to start cultivating the community right away. Smith attended the get-together and said she was greeted with nothing but friendly smiles.
“I went and introduced myself to several people who have already bought or are on the waiting list to buy,” she said. “Kids were running around playing with their parents, there were families, and older couples. It was so lovely.”
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