UPDATE TO OUR COMMUNITY: The Living Room is closing.

Summary:
1) The Living Room is closing as of the end of 2025. We are no longer accepting booking requests.
2) We are asking for community support for budget gaps and closing costs: Visit our GoFundMe
3) There will be a closing celebration in Jan 2026; stay tuned for more details to come!

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Dear friends and supporters of The Living Room,
Many of you know me, but for those who don’t, I’m Kelly, the steward of the Living Room space. I’ve been working with a tight network of Living Room community members to navigate some big transitions ahead, and we’re writing to share some difficult news.

The Living Room community gathering space will be closing its doors at the end of 2025. It has been such an honor to welcome so many of you and your communities over the past six years, and we’re so grateful for all of the warmth, creativity, joy, and thoughtfulness that you all have brought to the space through your presence and support.  We look forward to welcoming all those with existing reservations, but we unfortunately will not be accepting any additional booking requests. 

COMMUNITY ASK: Help The Living Room close with intention, care and dignity
We have launched a GoFundMe to help cover our budget gap and closing costs. 

Background: 
The Living Room has weathered constantly changing tides as a community home over the last nearly 6 years. The project started in January 2020 and was open for several months before the COVID quarantine began. During the height of the COVID pandemic, we hosted a year-long artist residency with Durham Beyond Policing, partnered with ERUUF to provide emergency refugee housing, and operated as the home base for the NC Women’s Prison Book Project. 

In 2023, we gently re-opened our doors for community gatherings and have been steadily growing over the past 3 years. We’ve used the space to gather, organize, strategize, regroup, sing, play, make art, meet new people, plant, heal, and celebrate. In 2025 alone, the Living Room has hosted 123 events, including retreats, workshops, potlucks, fundraisers, birthday parties, film screenings, grief containers, reading groups, song circles, community garden workdays, creative meetups, children's camps, and so much more. 

Before its conception as a community space, the duplex on Swift Avenue was just a rental property that served as a home for various tenants. Kelly moved into the property in 2016, and soon thereafter, she began to envision a space for community gatherings and movement work. She worked closely with Ligaiya Romero and other community members to launch the Living Room in January 2020. The closing of the Living Room will affect not only the many groups and individuals that have made the space a home for their community organizing projects; it will also displace the tenant who has stewarded the space, with her own personal resources, over the nearly 6 years that it has been open.

Why we are closing: 
Unfortunately, our landlord has sold the house where we are located to Duke, and Duke has decided not to maintain it as a rental beyond a brief transitional period. With regard to possible relocation of the Living Room: this has been a place-based, location-specific project, and we’ve poured countless hours into creating our community home here. Unfortunately, rebuilding in a new location is not something we have the resources to do. 

Why we are fundraising and what the GoFundMe will cover:
Since opening in 2020, The Living Room has been committed to a sliding scale model that prioritizes allocating space for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other folks on the margins, without regard to the ability to pay. While this has allowed this resource to be accessible to a broad variety of grassroots groups and marginalized folks, it has occasionally created budget gaps that have been met using personal funds to stay current on all of our expenses. Kelly has been stewarding the Living Room on a completely unpaid basis – fielding reservation requests, managing the books, cleaning the space, and welcoming in groups. She has had to pay out of pocket for the Living Room’s expenses when the booking income didn’t cover costs. We are asking for community support to share the burden of these past expenses as well as additional closing costs.

  • Expenses previously paid out of pocket by Kelly:

    • 2 months of rent

    • 2 years of utility payments (gas & electric)

  • Budget to cover rent and utilities during the Living Room’s final months

  • Moving costs and storage for furniture and supplies that are currently in the Living Room

  • Materials for the Living Room Closing Celebration (coming in Jan 2026)

  • Padding for unanticipated closing costs

  • A contribution towards personal displacement and relocation costs for Kelly, the unpaid onsite steward

$7000 of this goal will go toward direct costs/repayment. Anything above that will be a love gift to Kelly to support her relocation.

Thank you and a closing celebration to come:
We are so grateful to all of you for co-creating this community home with us over the past 6 years. Because of all of you, this has been a place of joy, creativity, grief, resilience, organizing, song, dance, food, art, power, love, and above all connection. Thank you so much for supporting The Living Room through this difficult transition. We will be hosting a final closing celebration in January 2026, and we hope you will join us – please stay tuned for details to come!

With love, gratitude + connection,
Kelly and The Living Room Closing Committee

p.s.: If you’re asking, but what about the garden??? Stay tuned for more info coming on that front, things are in the works…
If you’re on Instagram, follow @swiftcommunitygarden for updates, or email swiftcommunitygarden@gmail.com to be added to our email list.