We hope everyone had an awesome Pride! We're currently trying to keep up with a trash strike in Malden, a crop of ripening berries, and a whole lot of yard work.

We've moved in the last of our new housemates, and we're hard at work updating spaces. In the rush to move in after buying our properties, we didn't get to do much decorating at first. But we finally have some art on the walls, including original art by one of our residents!

We do expect to have one more room opening around September when a sublet ends. The advertisement is available here, and the application is at the end. Feel free to forward this email to anyone who's interested.

Solstice vibes

Like prior years, we hosted a party for the Summer Solstice. This year, our theme was fae and fairies! We had great turnout and a lot of fun, like the "take a treasure, leave a treasure" table.

In June we also hosted a co-op mixer (which we completely forgot to get pictures of). About 20 or 30 people came to MALT's outdoor space to meet others interested in communal living. If you're interested in more events like this, we recommend the Boston Co-op Network mailing list.

We use Signal for much of our internal communications, so we're trying something new where we make a one-off room for each party or organizing event. That also allows RSVPing to events via Signal, as many people have concerns about Partiful. If you're curious how to set this up, read more about the idea on Micah Lee's blog.

Our only event in July so far has been a Community Meal. We have one of these about every two weeks, featuring members of both houses and our friends, and we change the time and theme to keep it varied. This time was a chili cook-off! It was fun, delicious, and a great way to stock up our new chest freezer.

Planning progress

We held one of our Quarterly Planning Meetings last month, adjacent to the co-op mixer. This is a long-term planning meeting where we discuss budgeting, home improvement, and non-profit incorporation. We're very close to filing for incorporation (which is why we recently launched this website), but it's become a more challenging environment thanks to the Trump administration.

Meeting notes are available via our Google Drive.

A big part of this planning process is figuring out how we'll finance and schedule repairs. And last week, we landed a big new one after a sink on the 2nd floor leaked all the way to the basement:

We got very lucky that this leak didn't cause major damage or hit anyone's belongings. Unfortunately, this means that our main indoors "community space" is out of commission for at least a few weeks as we deal with drying, asbestos testing, and demolition. Resolving this issue has become our top priority.

What's next?

With how packed June was, and with our new emergency repairs, we expect July to remain a light month for our community calendar. We could all use a break!

However, several of us are excited to go see our housemate's band perform early next month at Somergloom:

That's it for June! Make sure to reach out if you have any feedback about our mailing list or website, or content you think we should include.