Law Looks to Subsidize Housing for Artists
Governor Spitzer signed a bill yesterday aimed at helping artists pay for housing, a measure meant to shore up the city’s cultural capital. The bill, which was sponsored by Assemblywoman Joan Millman, will give artists two-year grants of up to $12,000 for live-work spaces. “When people want to make it in the arts they come…
Governor Spitzer signed a bill yesterday aimed at helping artists pay for housing, a measure meant to shore up the city’s cultural capital. The bill, which was sponsored by Assemblywoman Joan Millman, will give artists two-year grants of up to $12,000 for live-work spaces. “When people want to make it in the arts they come to New York,” said Millman. “Artists come into communities that are rundown and sleazy and bring a life and vibrancy to that community—they are an economic engine and they shouldn’t be overlooked.” Though funding for the program has yet to be hammered out, it will likely provide grants for between 40 and 50 units, and Dumbo is being eyed as a possible location for the housing. As New York continues to hemorrhage artists to cheaper cities like Philly, you gotta wonder whether a bill like this is too little too late. And does it make sense to import artists back into nabes, like Dumbo, that they had a big hand in gentrifying?
Housing Help Slated for Artists [AM New York]
Photo by Escapefromnewyork
as a reasonably sucessful artist who has had a work (not live) space in DUMBO since 98, I will would like to send out a big heart f–k you to all the smug i-banker types who think artists don’t “work”. Most artist’s work their asses of doing freelance work, teaching, etc. in addition to developing their work. Then they billions in economic value for which they are not paid.
Do you enjoy living in Tribeca, Dumbo, the West Village, the East Village, or Williamsburg? Thank an artist.
That is, unless you would rather see NYC become just like Stamford, Conneticut.
Let me get this straight – you’re all getting your silk boxers in a bunch underneath that $4,000 custom suit you wear to the corner office over, at the very most, $600,000????
That’s the cost for about a week of that retarded Bat-Signal they did as a “memorial” to the twin towers.
9:43 – then why don’t you just move to Houston then, where the only subsidy for the arts was from Enron?
Right. Handouts are never a drain on the economy.
I’d rather subsidize artists than the i-banker vampires who have been screwing everybody else (and the long-term economy) without even offering a reach-around.
9:43 – Yeah, you have some good examples and that’s why NYC isn’t subisdizing artists’ rent in Philadelphia, Boston or DC (among other places).
Artists won’t stop coming of you don’t give them money. The dream is not to live in NYC in a subsidized apartment. The dream is to earn a living doing what you love.
I think this quote by Guy Trebay from today’s Times pretty much sums it up:
“…it seems obvious that huge sectors of the New York City economy would churn to a halt if all the Project Runway types suddenly stopped migrating here in the belief that the world could be changed by the sort of innovation inherent in how a garment is cut”.
This applies just as easily to art as it does to fashion.
Oh, so you mean that a sculpter could make some cheap beaded earrings too sell on the sidewalk or to a store to support his/her real work.
Or a painter could make some greeting cards or inexpensive mass market artwork to sell to support his/her real work.
Or, an artist could teach to make money to support their real work.
Calvin Klein doesn’t ask Ralph Lauren or someone else to subsidize his business. He makes underwear.
McDonalds doesn’t ask Burger King or someone else to subsidize them- they figure out how to make money.
U didn’t sell me.