Room opening: June 1st 2021 

Where Hungerford Terrace, downtown Burlington, VT

What Room for rent in a 6 bedroom house with 3 shared bathrooms, 6 other humans, 3 chickens, 1 dog & 1 cat.

A lovely 120 sq ft bedroom with a north facing window, letting in beautiful evening light. On the third floor, with two other bedrooms, and a shared bathroom. 

Unfortunately, the house is not wheelchair accessible. If you have different abilities, please be in touch & we can share more infrastructure details.

• Rent is $670, or $932 if you are two people, per month.
• Utilities average $60/month, higher & lower depending on the season. 
• Bulk food contribution averages $30/month. 
• 1 year lease (though we’d like a housemate who wants to live here longer than that). 

The communal spaces include 

• two kitchens: our daily family kitchen, and the homesteading kitchen,
• dining room, which often functions as a coworking space, 
• living room for reading, working, talking, cuddling, making music, 
• a movement room, furniture-free and ready for dance, yoga, fitness, play, and shows,
• a backyard with open lawn space, gardens of vegetables, flowers, & medicinal herbs, & a chicken coop, 
• and a lovely, bountiful front garden.

This crooked house is the Hungerfort, an intentional community, started in 2018, when some of us moved in with the intention to co-create a loving community to call home. We strive to go beyond co-inhabiting; the way we care for one another more closely resembles a family. This means working on things like open, direct, and kind communication and nurturing our relationships with each other and our neighbors, the people and the squirrels and the bees and everyone else. Today, we are 6 humans (7 including you!) ages ~ 25 to 35, plus 1 dog, 1 cat, 3 chickens, and 34 [indoor] plants. Some of the things different housemates dedicate our time to are activism, nursing, mutual aid organizing, sustainable business, carpentry, academia, political education, art&science, language justice, homesteading, graduate studies, movement&dance, and learning, always. 

We strive to undo and unlearn systems of domination and violence: white supremacy, racism, capitalism, the heteronormative patriarchy, etc. In many ways, living in an intentional community is the practice of starting that work at home. So, that means there’s skill-building work to be done like relating without dominating, making decisions together without anyone in charge, or being generous with each other and with people outside our home in ways that stretch our comfort zones. We are getting better all the time at relying on each other without creating hierarchies of dependence, and by distributing the work of making and maintaining this household equitably but flexibly. Sometimes we fight and sometimes this model of living together feels overwhelming. When we’re ready, we like to talk about it and we learn from it, the best we can. This deepens our relationships with each other. 

What’s it like around here? Housemates generally enjoy spending quality time at home, often in silliness, song, or big conversations about the world we want to live in. We cook for each other frequently, usually cleaning up together. We each commit to helping keep the house tidy and clean, doing monthly chores, resetting spaces after we use them, etc. During the day you may find some housemates hanging, working or studying in communal spaces while others are doing the same solo in their bedrooms. We generally quiet down after 10pm and until 8am. Food sharing matters a lot to us. We share most of our food, splitting grocery store costs, garden-grown treasures, rescued food, and more. Housemates are welcome to be a part of Food Not Bombs Burlington, which runs out of the house, providing daily free meals to the larger community, among other mutual aid efforts. It can be a lot of fun to put energy into making the house feel homey and collaborate on projects such as tending the garden, getting materials from used sources, or organizing communal spaces. This house needs a lot of love! Housemates are often inviting each other into fun activities and new habits, be it biking to the lake or working out in the movement room. We hold house meetings monthly and make time for check-ins when we need them, so hopefully you’re jazzed about these meetings too! Environmental values were part of the founding of this community. Many of us love to: repurpose stuff, avoid new consumerism, compost, bike more than drive, dumpster dive, engage in or organize activism, minimize energy use when possible, & let it mellow (or water the garden with it). 

COVID safety is an on-going conversation and we check in regularly. Many hours of discussion, email, decision-making, and negotiating have gone into our COVID protocols at this point in the pandemic. We’ve developed a “plus one” agreement for each housemate to connect safely with one other unvaccinated person or couple, and have a couple additional podmates. Other than that we mask-up, minimize risk/exposure wherever possible, and don’t currently have other guests indoors (inviting people instead into the backyard). 

Furry friends Amos the cat and Artemis the dog live in the house with us. It might be tricky to bring more non-human friends into the house (especially if they are not able to meet in person before move in), but if this is your dream home and you really want to be a part of this community, don’t let that stop you from getting in touch!

We’re still crafting our vision, answering the question of “why we want to do this thing” and coming to shared understandings of how our processes work, how we create belonging, etc. If any of this kind of loving labor excites you – definitely let us know!

We are looking for someone who

• wants to actively participate in this community,
• wants to create meaningful connections with each of their housemates, 
• values collective, not just individual,
• has the capacity for the foundational things: reliability, safe relationship with alcohol & other drugs, planning around house meetings, and cleaning,
• welcomes the vulnerability and joy of the process of learning, practicing, failing, trying again, and (de)growing. 

We would love to hear from you

• Who are you? What is it like to have you around? What else might we want to learn about you? 
• Why do you want to live in community? Have you before? Why this community?
• How does living in community now fit into your life long term?
• How long do you see yourself living here? 
• When you’re part of a group of people living together, what role do you tend to play/gravitate toward? What is most characteristic about the way you relate to others day to day, and co-create “home”?
• What are your current COVID safety practices?
• Do you have questions for us? 

E-mail us to fungorhodefort@gmail.com and we’ll set up a time to chat! Please reach out before April 24 if you are able to (as soon as possible, really!), but if you see this posting later than that, reach out anyway (: We would also love to hear from you even if a June move-in date is too early for you.