Star Community of Seattle

Seattle, Washington, United States

  • Updated on: Sep 7, 2025 (about 2 months ago)
  • Created on: Aug 10, 2021 (over 4 years ago)
Star Community of Seattle

Mission Statement

We are an urban residential community that focuses on personal growth, responsibility, creativity, sustainability, and creating a life with meaning and purpose.

Community Description

Wow, we struggle to describe ourselves. We are currently 16 adults who share two large group houses in South Seattle. We are a family of unrelated adults, and we are long-term - not a student or high turnover group. But we are also a broader community of far-flung individuals who have relationships with and resonance with the ideas of this residential group. We have separate jobs, and yet we spend ridiculous amounts of time together. We do cultural research and deep personal growth work. We are striving for ways to have a more positive impact on the planet, and to live more sustainably in our urban environment. We are a sex-positive and largely polyamorous community. We welcome queer folk, and have an increasing number among us, and yet we also study and seek a path for healing of the conflicts between (cis/het) men and women. We believe in trust and peace, and yet that trust and peace cannot arise without creative navigation of conflict. Conflict is a necessary part of growth and evolution, and we try to work with it rather than suppress it. We believe in transparency as a central value. We practice a form of community transparency modeled on ZEGG Forum, a practice developed in the communities of ZEGG and Tamera. We also practice a form of personal and community growth work based on Possibility Management, the work of Clinton Calahan. We did not come together around one central mission or vision, and we have spent 10 years trying to define exactly what we are about. I don't know that we ever will...we are about a lot of things. We are hard to categorize. We don't look like many other communities. But I hope this gives some sort of picture.

  • Status: Established (4+ adults, 2+ years)
  • Started Planning: 2014
  • Started Living Together: 2014
  • Visitors Accepted: Yes
  • Open to New Members: Yes
  • Please read the details in Membership below before contacting this community.Send Message
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/star.community.seattle
  • Contact Name: Florian Becquereau, Rea Clute
  • Community Address:
    6410 S Ryan St
    Seattle, Washington 98178
    United States

  • FIC Membership

    This Community is an FIC Member

  • Location

    Directory Map Placeholder

About

  • Type(s): Shared Housing, Cohouseholding, or Coliving (multiple individuals sharing a dwelling)
  • Programs & Activities:
    • Organization, Resource, or Network
    • Festivals, Conferences, Events
  • Location: Urban

Housing

  • Status: We have land we have developed on
  • Area: 0.5 acres
  • Current Residence Types:
    • Single-family homes
    • Room(s) in a house or building
  • Current Number of Residences: 2
  • Housing Provided: Rental
  • Land Owned By: Individual community member(s)
  • Additional Comments: We currently live in two large owned houses and hope to add more as needed.  Even better, we would love to build a very large group house suited to our needs. In the current economy this is on hold, but we would also love to buy land in a nearby rural area for those who want to live closer to the land. The "rural group" would be focused on building earthships, tiny houses, other low impact dwellings, living off the land, and creating a research center.  That's the dream.

Membership

  • Adult Members: 25
  • Child Members: 2
  • Non-Member Residents: 2
  • Percent Women: 50%
  • Percent Men: 31-40%
  • Percent Transgender: 1-10%
  • Percent Non-Binary: 11-20%
  • Visitors Accepted: Yes
  • Visitor Process: We aim to reach primarily people already in the Seattle area. We have public programs open to all, on a weekly basis, where new people may participate and learn about us. We can also welcome and provide housing on a limited basis to travelers with similar values who want to connect with us. Write Florian.Becquereau@gmail.com or Rea.clute@gmail.com.
  • Open to New Members: Yes
  • Membership Process: There is no formal membership process, and nothing that clearly delineates a member from a nonmember. Becoming involved and participating makes you a member.  It has been joked "If we think you are a member, and you think you are a member, then you are."  Residential members are those who apply and are accepted to live in one of our houses, OR who band together to rent a new affiliated house.  However, being a resident doesn't necessarily lead to membership, or vice versa.

Government

  • Decision Making: Consensus + (everyone agrees, except for up to 3 people.)
  • Identified Leader: Yes, multiple identified leaders
  • Leadership Core Group: Yes
  • Additional Comments: Similar to membership, we are pretty loose about leadership.  If people follow you, you're a leader.  Leadership is not always a great privilege - its often hard work.   We welcome people taking on leadership.  Decision making practices vary depending on the weight of the decision.  We make most decisions by informal consensus, but more momentous decisions require greater unanimity, while less important and reversible decisions can be made by one person taking initiative.  In issues that involve significant financial impact on the houses, the owners' have more voice, and sometimes veto power.  We are also trying to call out and resist the tendency for one person with strong feelings to have veto power.  We've been through that, and it makes for frustration and inertia. We have been working on a plan to share the equity in the houses among all the members, not just the legal owners.  This is not so easy when we have bank loans, and with such a loose definition of membership.  But its a goal.

Economics

  • Dues, Fees, or Shared Expenses: Yes
  • Monthly Fees($): 900
  • Shared Income: Partial Sharing of Income
  • Open to Members with Existing Debt: Yes
  • Additional Comments: The residential members each rent a bedroom, while the room pricing sometimes making consideration of what individuals can afford. We pool and split the cost of food and utilities pretty equally, though we have capped the utilities cost for some on a tight budget. We live in a car-dependent neighborhood, and we now have a fairly formal car sharing arrangement, so we avoid owning more cars than necessary for our transportation needs. We share services like phone plans and subscriptions as efficiently as possible for maximum benefit.   We have discussed before how much members want a greater degree of socialism, but this is what most of us are comfortable with.  Some of us work very hard at soul-killing jobs, to save money for a dream, to support loved ones outside of the community, or for other reasons.  Others pursue self-employment,  or minimal employment, or employment that is fulfilling but less remunerative.  And others are retired.  Our degree of expense sharing allows this freedom of choice without creating resentments, and for now that seems more valuable than greater egalitarianism.  If we were all doing similar work at a community business, we might choose differently.  We do, however, have an ethos that "no one bleeds".  We have collectively supported members in the past through times of financial stress, and we would do that again.

Sustainability Practices

  • Energy Infrastructure: We are connected to the grid.
  • Current Renewable Energy Generation: 50-75%
  • Energy Sources:
    • Hydro-Electric
    • Clean Energy from the Grid
  • Planned Renewable Energy Generation: Almost All, aroud 90%
  • Current Food Produced: 0%, or close to 0%
  • Planned Food Produced: Up to 25%
  • Food Produced Locally: Up to 25%

Lifestyle

  • Common Facilities:
    • Common House
    • Garden(s)
    • Vehicle Share
    • Workshop
    • Fire pit
    • Internet
  • Internet Available: Yes, community provides it
  • Internet Fast?: Yes, exceptionally.
  • Cellphone Service: Good for most people.
  • Shared Meals: 2-5 times per week
  • Dietary Practices:
    • Omnivorous (plants and animals)
    • Organic (no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers)
    • Mostly Vegetarian
    • Dairy-Free
    • Gluten-Free
  • Dietary Choice or Restrictions: No - people may eat however they wish.
  • Special Diets OK: Yes
  • Alcohol Use: Yes, used seldomly, or ceremoniously.
  • Tobacco Use: Yes, used seldomly, or ceremoniously.
  • Additional Diet Comments: We have folks of almost every dietary preference and restriction, and we have different eating schedules as well.  This is a factor that limits our shared meals.  We share a community-wide meal weekly, which attempts to accommodate everyone's dietary needs.  Aside from that, one of our two houses shares almost all dinners, while the other has perhaps one house meal a week.
  • Common Spiritual Practice(s):
    • Eclectic (integrates multiple religious or spiritual beliefs)
    • Buddhist
    • Jewish
    • Wiccan
    • Quaker
    • Unitarian Universalist
    • Paganism or Earth Religions
    • Mixed Eastern Philosophy or Practice
    • Atheist
    • Agnostic
    • Humanist
  • Spiritual Practice Expected?: No
  • Education Style(s): Up to each family or individual
  • Expected Healthcare Practices: Healthcare practices have always been very individualistic, and varied.  The pandemic tested this ethos, and we did an enormous amount of processing to reach agreement on what level of vaccination/masking/filtration/limits on movement between houses we would agree to. (We had three houses at that time).  We had members who were personally against self-vaccination, and others who did not want to breathe the same air as an unvaccinated person.  We had people working outside the home, and others not.  We had people in love/sexual relationships who lived in different houses.  We had people who were retired and had medical issues that put them at high risk.  We had people who were staunch believers in the science, and others highly suspicious of corporatized Western medicine.  Somehow we reached agreement on how we would manage the risks, and formed a very large pod.  We never made a decision to all get vaccinated, or any other specific healthcare practice.  We did make a decision to implement UV and air filtration systems in our houses, and then to deal with managing higher risk situations on a case by case basis.  We still tried to give people as much liberty as possible, while managing the exposure for those at higher risk.  I think it says something about us as a community that we got through it, and kept working the conflicts as they arose, and stayed together.  Now that the Covid risk is largely past, we are back to our very individualized approach to healthcare.
  • Healthcare Options: Up to each family, household, or individual

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Community Network or Organization Affiliations

The Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), Northwest Intentional Communities Association

Community Affiliations

We aren't affiliated, but we look to the communities of Tamera and Damanhur for inspiration. We are part of a loose association of "New Culture" communities. We also have connections with several other Seattle cohousing communities, NICA (Northwest Intentional Communities Association), and the Evergreen Land Trust.

Fair Housing Laws

This community acknowledges that their listing does not include any potential violations of the Fair Housing Law, or that they do not provide housing. For any questions about this topic please see our Content Policies and contact FIC with any questions or concerns: directory@ic.org.

Keywords

personal growth, sex-positive, polyamorous, Possibility Management, ZEGG Forum, New Culture, Tamera