Help Andrés Secure His Dream Cooperative Home!

Help Andrés purchase a share in his dream cooperative home! I am seeking $20,000 to cover my co-op share + closing costs - Donate here or to my Venmo @andres-oyaga-

Hi all, my name is Andrés! I'm originally from Los Angeles with roots in Guatemala and Colombia. I do not come from much money, frankly! My parents are immigrants who sacrificed so much and worked hard to provide me the opportunities I have today-- an upbringing that radicalized me. When I moved to Vermont in 2019, I fell in love with the landscape, the people, and political possibilities. I have been involved in various movement spaces here in Vermont, and now I’m part of a rad group of folks starting a limited equity housing cooperative!

We are creating a multi-racial, queer, anti-capitalist, intergenerational housing project. We are Alyssa, Laurel, Liz, and Andrés (name in the making!) As anti-capitalists, we value housing for its uses - shelter, gathering space, refuge, creating connection, sharing nourishing meals, safety - not for its market value and potential for future profit. Our goal is to not make a profit out of our housing, rather creating and keeping the housing affordable. This means sharing resources to ensure housing is accessible to people regardless of income, wealth, or class background. The space will be a gathering place for friends, neighbors, and visitors to do political work, community projects, connect, and have meals together. We hope the space could be a resource for the broader community. The space will be warm, welcoming, and full of connection as well as a place for folks to rest and have quiet, solitary time. We value clear communication, shared decision making, and showing up for the work in ways that honor our needs and capacity. There will be some expectations and opportunities for collective work and projects, as well as autonomy for folks to carve their own life and space. We are rooted in connection - to each other as the collective, to the broader community, and to ourselves as individuals.

see this cooperative as the natural next step for two main reasons:

First, I see our housing co-op as a creative solution in creating both affordable housing for myself and others in perpetuity (because we're using a limited equity model), addressing VT's pressing housing crisis.

Second, our cooperative aspires to be a hub for movement building and organizing for the people in Franklin County and beyond, but also a hub for love, community, mutual aid, fun, and whatever other needs we have the capacity and resources to meet.

Why 20k?

Thanks to friends and allies seeking to re-distribute their inherited wealth, I've been able to secure $85,000 in low and no-interest financing... But I'm still $20,000 short! I'm turning to my vast community for support to secure the last bit of funding I need to secure the last $15k of my share in the cooperative, as well as $5k for my share of closing costs and additional fees.

I cannot emphasize enough that this donation would be an investment in this cooperative not just for the present, but for the future, as our intention is to include clear guardrails to ensure future affordability, and creatively address the housing crisis in our state of Vermont by creating and introducing alternative ways of housing.

More about the home:

We mapped out steps to buy this fall or winter in detail at this past weekend's retreat. According to that timeline, the next few months would focus on incorporating as a co-op, accessing alternative and traditional finance, putting out a flier for our coop to seek properties before searching on the open real estate market, etc. The catch is... a day after we wrapped our retreat, through a friend of Alyssa's, we stumbled upon (on Facebook) our dream house in St. Albans, which meets all our decided upon non-negotiables and our wants/desires as well!! Folks visited the property and confirmed it was our dream house, and we've been meeting nearly every night to work, research, and make sure we all align on our shared desire to move on this property and map out next steps... and ta-dah! We made an offer, they accepted, and we're about to close! Timing is very tight because the family that is moving needs to sell before they can buy a home in their new home of Boston, where they need to be settled in by August.