The Bubbaland Community (named for one of its original 1960s residents, Bubba the cat!) in Professorville, Palo Alto, is looking for a new housemate to join us in mid-to-late March! We are located near downtown Palo Alto, right behind the Town & Country shopping center. We are around the corner from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, a quick walk to the Palo Alto Caltrain station, close to multiple farmers markets, and a quick bike ride to Stanford’s main quad.

We are a community of around 8 graduate students and young professionals (mid-20’s-30’s) who value sustainability, social justice, and communal living split across three units in a single big home; the current opening is an unfurnished room in our downstairs five-bedroom, two-bathroom unit.

The entire community engages in weekly house dinners, house meetings, and bi-monthly outdoor work days. Together, we share and communally work to maintain (and beautify!) our outdoor spaces, including a back patio, several garden areas, and a raised bed for herbs/vegetables. We also split utilities/WiFi across the complex, and have tons of permitted street parking as well as a driveway with 3 parking spots and a covered bike shed.

We all value building community in and outside of the house, but we also live independent lives. Some nights, the house is dark, and others, you'll find us all spontaneously coalescing around the kitchen table, sharing Prosecco, watching a movie in our living room projector set-up, or playing board games. At the house, we've hosted everything from potlucks to “ballot parties” for researching local issues before voting to craft nights to patio bonfires (sometimes featuring ABBA dance parties). We also love excursions: a hike in the hills and onion rings at Alice's Restaurant, compost acquisition trips to our local free compost pile or an SF chocolatier (cocoa husk mulch is a wonderful-smelling garden game changer), volunteering together, or scouring secondhand stores.

Now for the nitty-gritty details! We communally share chores and responsibilities as well as most of our dry goods and staple food items, and we have in-unit washer/dryer. The shared space is large and open, with a renovated kitchen, spacious living room with an upright piano, finished basement, and two bathrooms. Rent is $1005.4/mo; utilities include high-speed internet, electricity, gas, and water, and often come to roughly $60 per month. Two of the current housemates do have cats, but due to allergies, they only live in personal rooms and outside (not in any common spaces); it's unlikely we could accommodate more furry friends right now, but feel free to let us know your specific situation when you reach out. Over the pandemic, we've been through many variations of care-inspired COVID-19 policies; our current approach is that we keep a collective stash of free tests so that we can all test 2-3 times/week, and guests to the house test too, to avoid worry about individual decisions outside of the house. With COVID, and with all decision-making, we value open communication and compassion.

The room, it's worth noting, is a bit funky: it was originally built as a sun room, so has large windows out of the house...and also into the living room (with very effective shutters on the inside of the room). It's also a strange shape: very long and narrow with a slightly-larger-than-bed sized nook on the far end, a middle hallway with the exposed brick fireplace exterior on one side and a large built-in open closet on the other, and another similarly-sized nook on the other side (where the current resident has managed to nicely fit a big dresser, a loveseat, and a large desk). The current resident absolutely loves the space, and think it's an especially nice layout for work-from-home, with almost two separate rooms for sleeping and for work. But, because of its funkiness, this room also has a lower rent than the rest of the house. It will be mostly unfurnished, but has a large built in bookshelf and also a bed-frame optimized for the outer nook. The current resident is asking for $150 to cover the curtain system + built-in ceiling lights that she installed and is planning to leave.

We are looking forward to meeting our new housemate! If you think this would be a good fit for you, please reply to this post to introduce yourself by answering the following questions:

• Who are you, and what do you do for a living?
• Why are you interested in moving to Bubbaland?
• What is your ideal move-in date?
• How long would you like to live here, ideally?
• What is one way you enjoy building community?
• What is the best email to reach you?