Bitternut Homestead Urban Collective

Bitternut Homestead is a four-to-six member co-household on Otisco Street in the Near Westside of Syracuse. Our location is within walking or easy biking distance to downtown and Armory Square, Lipe Art Park, Burnett Park, and a variety of favorite businesses including Middle Ages Brewery, Salt City Market, The Gear Factory, Recess Coffee on Tipp Hill, and Scratch Bakehouse.

We are looking for someone who will fit in well with our co-household model. We value sharing our lives through friendships and social activities, cooking and eating together, garden and landscape participation, regular house meetings and organization, and community and social justice engagements. All the while, we maintain independent and interdependent personal lives, private bedroom space, shared living spaces including a TV room with cast iron wood stove and a general purpose exercise/music/meditation room.

We are LGBTQ+ friendly, welcoming to diversity of all sorts, and currently are:

U, She/Her, late 30’s, Co-Director of Campaign for NY Health to bring universal health care to the state; salsa dancer polyglot speaks Polish, English, Spanish and French; loves tennis and volleyball.

F, He/Him, late 40’s, public servant entrepreneurial educator with Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College, advocate and practitioner of cooperative economics and community building, community gardener and permaculture perennial food landscaper.

A, She/Her, early 30’s, Singer-Songwriter; Queer Community Builder; works P/T as Assistant to the Director with the Syracuse Community Choir; and is P/T Outreach Coordinator with AGREE (Alliance for a Green Economy); loves creative writing, yoga, and running.

L, 5 years old, Australian Cattle Dog; loves sticks, running off-leash at Pass’s Arboretum, and eating! (we are not able to host additional pets at this time)

We all love bicycles, supporting each other, home-cooked in-season meals, coffee and tea.

The house is 100+ years old with lots of character. The currently available bedroom is about 10×10 feet, on the second floor. It would be most suitable for someone who enjoys daily interactions with housemates and is active mostly in the daytime. No kegs, smoking [of anything], or additional pets are allowed in the house. Currently there are some scented products in personal use by housemates, but all products we share are as unscented as possible.

We share all costs: Per Person – Rent: $350 (includes Internet, water, taxes, trash/recycling), Utilities for electric usage ranges from $60-80 monthly, Food: $120 monthly average. (we cook most of our meals at home and from scratch) (the “food” cost reflects mostly organic food for shared dinners and all other meals; also cleaning and bathroom supplies such as sponges, toilet paper, and the miscellaneous odds and ends—like a new spatula, or a special cleanser, or… ). We expect this amount to increase by 2-3% at the end of each calendar year. There is a required refundable deposit of $200.

Room will be available for move-in immediately once interview process is finished. No-commitment month-to-month during the first year – group evaluation at month 2, self evaluation at months 3 and 6, final evaluation for continued invitation to live beyond one year at month 11. Two hours weekly gardening and landscape work required, cooking for the house at least once per week, weekly food shopping rotation, share of household chores (bathrooms, floors, kitchen, dusting) 1-2 hours per week; work share available for capital projects to reduce monthly rent up to $105 per month (7 hours at $15 per hour).

The Bitternut Homestead (named after the Indigenous/Haudenosaunee word Otisco, or Us-te-ke, meaning “bitter-nut-hickory”) is a 4 bedroom home in Syracuse’s Near West Side (NWS) just off of downtown. Syracuse is a city of 145,000 people, and the NWS is an urban community with high racial, but low economic, diversity – a median income of $25,653 exists in the bottom 3.5% of national zip codes. The house had been vacant for 3-4 years at the time of purchase, and required new plumbing, electric, heating, hot water, structural repairs from water and animal damage, and major interior and exterior finish work. For instance, all window glass was broken and would be replaced while preserving the original wooden frames and sills.

Natural building & simple living are also strategies being utilized. Core heating is through wood heat using a cast iron stove; this is supplemented with electric baseboard heating with zoned control in each room, partially supplied by solar panels. We did not hook up to the natural gas supply lines during renovations in order to maintain an example of an “Anti-Fracking House”. Other techniques include interior natural clay plastering and homemade paints, hugelkultur garden beds made from downed woody debris, hand finished floors (scraping, sanding, treating with linseed oil), food fermentation and preservation.

Our primary formal document of community purpose is our food-focused mission statement viewable at https://www.facebook.com/notes/bitternut-homestead-on-otisco-street/bitternuts-food-focused-mission-statement/2082150988464865/