Exciting news! Housecorp has been working on a long range facilities plan for larger, sorely needed house improvement projects, to ensure our continued experiment in cooperative living can indeed continue!
Many of us have fond memories of time out on the pika roofdeck, chilling on the first floor deck for outside dinners, and the roof at pika keeping rain outside and us warmly burrowed in non-damp beds. Having served pika well, those decks and roof have reached the end of their lifespans and need to be replaced (see below for more details).*
The house and Housecorp facilities committee have been working hard to make plans for a new roof and deck system(!), and work is already underway and will continue over the summer and into the Fall. To help make this happen, we have been approved for a loan from the Independent Residence Development Fund (IRDF) and while most of the cost of the project will be covered by regular house rent, donations would go a long way to ensuring we keep rent at a manageable level and continue to work on other very-needed projects (i.e. replacing the 40-year-old kitchen floor where many tiles are broken, and the joists underneath have been subject to some rot as well…).
The estimated cost of the project is $550,000, so we are hoping to raise donations over the coming years to help offset the cost. You can donate by going to https://giving.mit.edu/search/node/3766600 and donating to the IRDF — as long as pika is listed as your associated living group in the alumni directory, your donations to the IRDF will go to pika’s capital campaign. If you’ve already been regularly giving to MIT, but want the funds to now go to pika, you can donate to the IRDF via the channels you already are, and then that gift too will go to the capital campaign.
10% of donations to the IRDF as a result of this campaign will go to systemwide IRDF programs. The remaining 90% of donations can be used by pika for eligible components of this project and any other eligible projects in the form of an IRDF Major Project Grant. IRDF donations, just like general donations to MIT, are tax-deductible contributions to a 501(c)(3) organization (pika itself is a 501(c)(7) and thus not tax-deductible).
*While you can still chill on the decks, the rot on boards, particularly those connected directly to the house, has become *Alarming*, and during heavy rains, damp patches appear in various places of the ceiling inside the building. I’m sure those of you who have been house managers feel the fear strike deep into your bones, even now, as you realize more and more water damage is slowly accumulating in places we cannot even see, possibly leading to a future where pika the building is no longer viable. We will stand for this no more! We’ve hired contractors to replace the roof, and redo the decking system this summer, and are really excited for the project to complete, the roof to work as a roof again, and the decks to be safer & up to date with building code.
We’re excited about the work the facilities committee has done to make sure the new deck system (including roof deck) will preserve what so many pikans love about the house while making it safe and sustainable for future generations. If you’re interested, feel free to reach out for more details about the planned work.