The Mothership

Mission: Queer-friendly child-centric community house with a focus on social justice.

From www.ic.org/directory/another-castle/:

The Mothership is an urban intentional community living in two houses in Portland, Oregon. There are currently 11 people living here, and we are in the process of acquiring a third house which will increase our population capacity to 17, and then to build 4 additional bedrooms beyond that.

We have a fully collectivized food system with the understanding that anyone can come eat here, we share most household expenses, and a subset of us operate as a fully income sharing group.

We support each other as parents, believe children should be treated like humans, and humans should be treated well. Many of us co-parent each other's kids and we generally believe children to be the responsibility of the group.

We love welcoming guests. Many people think of The Mothership as home base and stop in to refuel, gather supplies, and plan new expeditions.

We are committed to clear, direct, and open communication, which we maintain with regularly scheduled (twice a year with each member of the house) one on one conversations and more one on one, small group, and whole community discussions on an as-needed basis. We encourage communication early and often, and we endeavor to avoid having unresolved interpersonal struggles that lead to a toxic living environment. If you've upset someone at The Mothership, you either already know about it or are about to.

We acknowledge having been raised in a culture that teaches racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, gender essentialism, ableism, body shaming, slut shaming, and the enforcement of gender roles and stereotypes. When these things inevitably fall out of our mouths, we are committed to talking about why they were problematic and how we can do better in the future.

We aspire to be a safe space for the marginalized. We have cultivated a culture that feels safe and comfortable for many queer, non-binary, and transgender people, as evidenced by our current demographics: we are over 70% LGBTQIA. Two of our eleven current members are people of color, one of whom brought forward a vision of using the large number of living spaces opening up to create a culture where people of color feel similarly safe and at ease in their homes. We are collectively working toward that dream.

A service of the Data Commons Co-op. The project has been supported by Equal Exchange, the Cooperative Charitable Trust, the USDA, and many others - thank you! Tech volunteers over the years include: Benjamin Bradley with support from GAIA Host. Ben Mauer with support from Quilted. Paul Fitzpatrick. Ronin Tech Collective, Brattleboro Tech Collective, Sligo Computer Services. Jason Lemieux. Default map tiles courtesy of MapQuest. Default map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA.