Halloween is the perfect time to show off your creativity and embrace both the spooky and fabulous. For LGBTQ renters, it’s an opportunity to infuse your space with festive flair that reflects both pride and personality — without breaking the bank. Whether you’re hosting friends for a ghoulish gathering or simply decking out your apartment for some solo seasonal fun, we’ve got you covered with budget-friendly, LGBTQ-inspired decorating tips that bring glam, style, and inclusivity to your haunted home.

1. LGBTQ Symbols and Colors. Rainbow-Inspired Decorations: Incorporate rainbow-colored string lights, garlands, and flags into the Halloween decor. This can be paired with classic black and orange Halloween colors to create a unique, inclusive aesthetic.

Pride Pumpkins: Paint pumpkins in rainbow or trans Pride flag colors or carve designs like hearts or symbols of equality to mix Halloween with LGBTQ pride.

2. Drag Queen-Inspired Glam. Glitter and Glam: Draw inspiration from drag queens by adding glamor to Halloween decor. Use metallic streamers, sparkling skulls, and shimmery fabrics for a fabulous touch.

DIY Drag Masks: Create or purchase affordable masks with feathers, sequins, and bold colors for a decorative wall or window display, which can also double as party favors.

3. Inclusive Horror Icons. Iconic Figures: Use LGBTQ-friendly horror icons like Elvira, Divine (from “Pink Flamingos”), or characters from “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in posters or costumes. They add a campy, queer edge to Halloween décor.

DIY Posters or Cutouts: Print out photos or posters of these characters and frame them inexpensively to give your apartment a bold statement piece.

4. Thrifty Decorating Tips. Up-cycled Decor: Thrift stores are a great resource for inexpensive Halloween props — like old frames, candle holders, and vases—spray paint them black or gold for a spooky and chic feel.

DIY Spooky Lanterns: Repurpose mason jars or old glass containers by placing battery-operated LED lights or tea lights inside. Decorate the outside with stickers or painted-on spooky designs like bats, pumpkins, or cobwebs.

Black Lace on a Budget: Drape black lace or fishnet fabric (found cheaply at fabric stores) over tables or lampshades for an eerie, gothic vibe.

5. Queer-Friendly, Sustainable Alternatives. Eco-Friendly LED Lighting: Encourage the use of LED lights in purple, orange, or green. Not only are they energy-efficient, but they’re safer for apartments that may have limitations on open flames or outlets.

Plant-Based, Vegan Candles: For a spooky, cozy vibe, suggest plant-based, cruelty-free candles. Opt for scents like pumpkin spice or cinnamon for a seasonal touch without compromising on values.

6. Community Engagement. Collaborative Building Decor: Suggest organizing a building-wide LGBTQ-friendly Halloween decorating contest where neighbors can share resources and collaborate. This fosters community spirit and makes decorating more fun and budget friendly.

Host a Pumpkin-Carving Party: Recommend throwing a pumpkin-carving event, allowing friends and neighbors to come together for a fun, budget-friendly activity.

Halloween is a time to unleash your creativity, and with these thrifty LGBTQ decorating tips, you can transform your rental apartment into a spooky, Pride-filled haven. From rainbow pumpkins to drag queen glam and up-cycled decor, these ideas prove that you don’t need a huge budget to make a big impact. 

So, whether you’re hosting a Halloween party or just want to embrace the spooky season with a queer twist, these decorating tips will help you celebrate with flair and Pride. And remember, Halloween is about having fun, being unapologetically yourself, and expressing your unique identity—because in the end, there’s nothing scarier than not being true to who you are. 

Scott Bloom is owner and Senior Property Manager, Columbia Property Management. For more information and resources, visit ColumbiaPM.com.

From senior federal officials like White House staffers and lobbyists who need to keep abreast of international and domestic politics, to bookstore owners who need to stay informed on the latest news to provide an engaging and relevant space for customers, the city of Washington depends on the news.  

One queer-owned start-up in the nation’s capital has recognized the need for fast and extensive information collection and is working on a solution. The start-up, Delve Deep Learning, is taking steps to make finding all information on any topic as easy as a Google search through the monstrously powerful tool of AI.   

Two executives from the new information start-up Delve Deep Learning sat down with the Washington Blade to discuss how their work is attempting to change the way professionals think and work in the capital.  

To grasp how Delve is transforming the way Washington operates, it’s essential to first understand what Delve is. 

“About 10 years ago, [I] founded Delve,” Jeff Berkowitz, founder and CEO told the Blade. “It is a competitive intelligence and risk advisory firm focused on helping public affairs professionals navigate all the different stakeholders and complex policy issues that they have to deal with.”  

Kyle Huwa, Delve’s research manager, offered a simpler explanation of their work: “Delve is a consulting company specializing in public affairs intelligence.” 

Delve provides its clients with a monitoring program to keep track of challenges they may face as well as on-demand research tools to help respond to those challenges. Their clients, which range from industry associations to policymakers, use this information to look to the future to find the best path forward using AI.  

“Public affairs professionals have the daily and weekly task of staying on top of any number of issues for their clients and their companies,” Huwa said. “From news articles to bills, regulations, press releases, social media posts, from stakeholders. There’s just an overwhelming load of information that they have to process. What we’re doing is taking all of that information, bringing it into one place, and using AI models to really surface the content that is most relevant to what public affairs professionals need to know.” 

The “most relevant” information, Huwa explained, widely varies per client. Some uses of Delve include watching the progress of a piece of legislation through a state government, an old forgotten regulation passed by a government organization, or news on current events in another part of the world. Regardless of what they are tracking, Delve wants to make finding what their clients are looking for easier.  

The program, Berkowitz explains, was started initially to help its own employees but was soon found to be valuable more broadly.  

“The platform really started as an internal tool at Delve,” Berkowitz said. “When Chat GPT 3.5 came along, we started to see the promise of generative AI. It’s the first technology I saw where it can’t replace our team members, but we can train it just like we can team members and make it a real co-pilot for the analysis that public affairs professionals need to do every day.”

It soon became evident that this application could change the way research in public affairs is conducted. 

“It really became clear that this was something that every public affairs team needs and that we didn’t necessarily need to be the intermediary between the technology platform and them,” Berkowitz added. “We could really imbue the AI models with our approach and methodology, and put it directly in their hands.” 

This in turn, the duo explained, saved precious time and money for their clients to more effectively research what needed to be done next.  

To understand how this saves precious time and money for their clients, Huwa explained how it differs from any general web search. 

“Historically you do this with keywords, right?” Huwa said. “You might search in Google with a keyword, but with keywords, you have to really guess exactly the right keywords. Sometimes your search return would be too broad, other times it would be too narrow because you didn’t guess all of the keywords that impacted your issue. With AI, we’re able to really go beyond keywords and identify the content, the news, the bills, etcetera, that a user is looking for in the same way that an analyst would use critical thought to find and sift through content. Once we surface that content for users, we’re helping them organize it into reports. We’re helping them draft language insights about that content. It’s really a way to save time and help them get to those insights more effectively.”  

Berkowitz told the Blade time is extremely valuable to those in the public affairs sector. Many of which are working against the clock to push their candidates, policies, or thoughts into the spotlight before their opponent.  

“Our mission is to save public affairs teams 1 million hours in the next five years because they spend too much time trying to figure out what’s going on in the world and how it impacts their organizations or clients,” Berkowitz explained. “Right now, they spend two plus hours a day, on average, that’s 25% of their work week, which only leaves them 75% of their work week to do 100% of their actual job, advocating on behalf of their clients or their organizations.”

This information in turn allows Delve’s clients more time to develop strategies to deal with potential issues ahead.  

“Our goal is to make sure that that surprise is no longer the standard for public affairs teams, because that’s really the reality today,” Berkowitz said. “There’s just so much information flying at them so fast that it’s impossible to keep on top of everything.” 

While extremely helpful in surfacing information, there are other aspects of AI that have some people scared — particularly when it comes to abusing AI to promote misinformation as truth.  

Berkowitz said he is not worried about their platform being misused.  

“For our platform there’s not really a great risk because there’s no access to the prompt,” he said. “That’s all behind the scenes in the workflows. It’d be difficult for somebody to misuse our product. But more broadly, misinformation has been with us for longer than AI has been around. If I was working at a Chinese or Russian troll farm, I would be worried about losing my job to AI, but misinformation has been with us for a long time. It’s going to continue to be with us.” 

The way to deal with misinformation, Berkowitz said, is to inform people on how to spot it.  

“The best defense against that is a more educated populace,” he said. “The more we help folks understand what’s real and what’s not. I think that’s going to keep getting more challenging as AI gets more effective in creating videos, creating avatars, creating these different forms of content.” 

“Our platform’s job is to surface all of the content that’s out there,” Huwa added. “I think it’s an ongoing process that that kind of everyone in the data space is confronting, to figure out how you sift through, how you address misinformation when there are more than a million news articles coming online every day.” 

Berkowitz pointed out that in some cases misinformation may be what the client needs to find and if AI doesn’t show it, it would be significantly less helpful.  

“It depends on folks’ use cases,” Berkowitz said. “Some folks really only want those trusted news sources and trusted sources of information, and we’re giving them the ability to filter, to only get those. If you’re doing reputational issues as a public affairs professional, you need to see the crazy stuff, even if it’s not true, right? We’re going to surface that stuff, even if it is misinformation because we need to flag it so that the folks that have the ability to correct the record can address that.”  

While they do not fear the potential for misinformation on their AI platform, they are concerned about training the system to avoid bias. 

“I think especially when it comes to AI, there has to be an extra sensitivity to having diversity of experiences and backgrounds in representation,” Berkowitz said. “These AI models, especially these foundation models, are trying to create this foundation of knowledge of the world. If you’re only including certain types of experiences, you’re not going to get the true foundation of the world.” 

One reason Berkowitz and Huwa care deeply about preventing prejudiced thinking to impact their AI models is because of their identity as gay men and their experience with prejudiced people.  

“As LGBT founders, if you look at some of the core values that we’re bringing into Delve Deep Learning, one of our core values is to build with precision and transparency,” Berkowitz added. “I think being able to be open and clear about what we’re doing is certainly something that can be a challenge for a lot of LGBT folks growing up. One of our other core values is to make sure that we’re building without silos — that it’s a very collaborative process, and everybody is included… Isn’t it great making sure that we’re kind of building without those walls in place? I think that that sort of comes from the ethos that I think a lot of folks that identify as LGBT wish they had in more spaces.” 

Huwa sees their experience as gay men almost in parallel to being a start-up founder.  

“I think some of the journey as an LGBT person is figuring out how to confront challenges,” Huwa said. “I think starting a business that’s really pressing into a new area, a new technology, and trying to be on the cutting edge of that technology is just the process of taking risks and overcoming challenges.” 

Huwa also referenced the support Delve got from Growth Lab, a startup accelerator that provides mentoring, education, and networking opportunities for companies founded by LGBTQ entrepreneurs, for their help in providing resources to confront their challenges. 

“Having Growth Lab as a resource and having other people who’ve experienced being both LGBT founders and starting a business, which is a big undertaking, right?” Huwa said. “I think one of the benefits of being a co-founder and LGBT identifying is that you do have that community that can support you. Growth Labs has been a great resource there. It’s nice to have that community support.” 

With support from organizations like Growth Lab, the tech industry is increasingly embracing diversity.  

“I think for LGBT folks specifically, tech is fairly inclusive, particularly in the political tech space,” Berkowitz said. 

Huwa went as far as to say that he would encourage anyone within the LGBTQ community to start looking into technology and the possibilities within AI to make their world a better place.  

“Coming from the technical side, I would advise anyone even remotely interested in learning more about AI to just dive in and start learning how to prompt well and start testing out the different tools,” Huwa said. “The great thing about AI as a technology is that it is really accessible to everyone — for LGBT individuals, for anyone underrepresented in the tech space. Also you have access to these tools and can start learning how to use them. I think that can be really helpful as you look for a job, as you think about maybe trying to start and create a startup yourself.”

Sadly, we have waved goodbye to summer and are now slowly shifting from enjoying outdoor activities to things we can do indoors. If you are lucky enough to have a basement, renovating it into livable space can be a great winter project to dramatically increase the functionality and value of your home. 

Basements come with unique challenges due to their location below ground level, and overlooking critical aspects can lead to long-term problems. They are particularly vulnerable to dampness. Failure to address moisture can lead to mold growth, structural damage, and health hazards.

To tackle moisture control, start by checking for water leaks or seepage through the walls and floor. If moisture is present, you may need to apply waterproofing solutions to the exterior or interior walls of your home. Installing a vapor barrier is advisable to prevent condensation from damaging insulation and walls.

Make sure the basement has proper drainage systems, such as a sump pump and foundation drainage. The sump pump can remove water that collects around the foundation, while an effective drainage system redirects water away from the home. Installing a dehumidifier can also help. 

Basements also tend to be colder than the rest of the house. Proper insulation in the walls and floor helps regulate temperature, reducing heating costs in winter and maintaining a cool, comfortable, and energy efficient environment in summer. Insulating the ceiling can reduce noise transfer between the basement and the upper floors, making the space quieter and more private.

Before any significant work begins, it’s crucial to assess the basement’s structural integrity. This includes checking the foundation for cracks or signs of shifting, which could indicate a bigger problem, particular with the plethora of old houses in the area.

If you notice any large cracks or signs of movement, consult a structural engineer or foundation expert to determine whether repairs are needed. Small cracks can be sealed, but larger ones may require reinforcement or more extensive foundation work.

Depending on local building codes, you may need to install egress windows if you are adding bedrooms or turning the basement into a rental unit. Egress windows provide an escape route in case of emergencies and allow more natural light to enter the space, making it feel more welcoming.

When adding a bathroom or kitchen, you’ll find that installing plumbing in a basement can be more challenging because of the need to pump wastewater upwards. You may need a macerating toilet system or a sewage ejector pump to manage this. I learned this the first time I found that, contrary to what we have been told, water can indeed travel up.

Adding more outlets, lighting, appliances, and ventilation systems may necessitate electrical upgrades. Since basements are often unfinished, you may have exposed wiring, which should be properly enclosed or rerouted to meet code. Depending on the scope of the renovation, you might need to upgrade your home’s electrical panel to handle the increased demand.

Proper ventilation is often overlooked in basement renovations but is essential for maintaining air quality and preventing the buildup of stale air or harmful gases. Installing mechanical ventilation, such as an HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilator) or an ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator), can help ensure a consistent flow of fresh air in the basement.

Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, can enter homes through cracks in the foundation. Since radon exposure is a leading cause of lung cancer, it’s wise to test for it before beginning the renovation. If elevated levels are detected, you may need to install a mitigation system.

Once the technical aspects are addressed, focus on creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing layout. The design of your basement will depend on how you plan to use the space, whether it’s a guest room, home theater, office, workout area, or game room.

Since natural light is limited in basements, it is important to plan your lighting carefully. Recessed lighting is a popular choice because it doesn’t take up ceiling space, but you should also consider adding floor lamps and sconces to make the space feel brighter and more inviting.

Choose flooring that can withstand moisture, such as vinyl planks, tile, or sealed concrete. Since basements can double as storage areas, consider incorporating built-in shelving, closets, or under-stair storage to maximize the available space.

Whether doing it yourself or hiring professionals, renovating a basement is a rewarding project that can add significant value to your home, but it comes with challenges. From moisture control and insulation to plumbing and air quality, careful planning is crucial to ensure a comfortable, functional, and safe space to enjoy indoor hobbies and emerge from winter free from the Basement Blahs.

Valerie M. Blake is a licensed Associate Broker in DC, MD & VA with RLAH Real Estate / @properties. Call or text her at (202) 246-8602, email her at DCHomeQuest.com, or follow her on Facebook at TheRealst8ofAffairs.