Help build accessible trans sanctuary at The Rêve

Help Build Accessible Trans Sanctuary at the Rêve

Busy and want the short version?

Please donate and boost to help an all-trans team—with vast experience organizing projects and communities—build accessible sanctuary space in this critical socio-political moment! This “casita” is located in the Hudson Valley of New York, surrounded by beautiful greenery, and will welcome people from a variety of backgrounds.

The Momma Renée Sanctuary Casita

To increase accessibility for our fellow disabled community members as well as creating the ability for safer short-term stays and sanctuary options in this moment where many are fleeing their homes, we are seeking funding to finish our housing project: the Momma Renée Sanctuary Casita. This would allow us to host people who can’t safely sleep on the ground, need to plug in a CPAP machine, or otherwise cannot access tent camping, but still want to experience the Rêve, as well as those who need a soft place to temporarily land in their pursuit of safety and freedom.

Momma Renée, our beloved trans elder, stayed with us during the first COVID summer, and we are honoring her (with her blessing) in the name of this sanctuary expansion.

There’s an existing outbuilding on the land that we have begun to renovate in order to provide COVID-safe and ADA-guided living space for overnight visitors, but it’s very old and needs significant structural work. We have hired a trans contractor and are far into the project, but we’ve been funding it out of our own pockets and need to expand the circle to get the Momma Renée Sanctuary Casita over the finish line!

What is the Rêve?

The Rêve is an all-trans intentional community situated on unceded Munsee Lenape land. We are also a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ people to gather, rest, and experience joy. While we center trans people in our leadership and decision-making, we welcome the expansive spectrum of our communities in the space. Our wider community spans the Hudson Valley and reaches far beyond, with people traveling from even overseas to find connection, respite, and safety among us. The local region itself is in constant flux—some of us have deep roots here, while others arrive seeking refuge from hostile policies, economic instability, and systemic violence.

Since our inception in 2018, we’ve hosted hundreds of people for durations ranging from an afternoon to two years. We’ve hosted self-defense workshops, talent shows, retreats, seminars on community-building practices, group ritual and spiritual observances, and countless beautiful bonfires at which people can experience the natural world in a loving and protected trans community. Just in the last year, we’ve hosted land-work days, a 40+ person 3-day camping event, our annual Happy Birthday Marsha family-focused event, a picnic for trans femmes, and an online digital security training attended by 50+ people. We’ve also dedicated many hours to meeting with other trans and queer people who aim to start their own intentional communities.

It is well-studied that spending time in nature has significant positive mental health effects. Especially for people who may have little access to camping, hiking, swimming, and collective living, our offering of spaces in nature serves as a balm. This is all done in an ecologically conscious way, aiming for reciprocal relationships with the land and its inhabitants. We prioritize working with fellow trans people, and reinvesting in our communities as much as possible—whether it’s directly hiring trans folks, engaging with queer mutual aid projects, getting produce from trans farmers, or anything that uplifts our peoples’ expertise and talents.

Those of us facilitating this project have dedicated our lives to creating spaces where trans people, and in particular, disabled trans people and QTPOC, do not have to fight to be accommodated. Everyone who comes through our space is cared for to the best of our abilities; we provide housing, food, and amenities; we cover travel expenses; we never want finances to be a barrier stopping our people from getting to us.

What are we doing now?

During the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we expanded the accessibility of our space to more temporary members fleeing unsafe living conditions, as well as short-term visitors who just needed a reprieve for a week or even a few hours. We invested a lot of energy and money into transitioning to all-outdoor events to support our fellow COVID-conscious, disabled, and immunocompromised community.

We purchase and make available tests and masks for guests, and all our events have cancellation policies pegged to the average transmission rates reported in New York State, NYC, and county. We do our utmost to enable disabled visitors to come to our space, offering up our own beds, creating special menus and meals to meet every requested dietary need, proactively offering spaces for extra shade and resources for extra cooling, organizing volunteers to help load/unload people's gear, coordinating rideshares, and more.

As crisis builds upon crisis and more and more of our community members are seeking some kind of sanctuary, we know that we need to expand and fine-tune our capacity once again, and specifically to provide living conditions for guests that we can make available all year round, and that are more accessible than camping.