Lots of Love for the Schermerhorn House
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet…
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet will be the anchor tenant.) Designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, the 217-unit building will end up being split fairly evenly between arts-related professionals who don’t make a lot of dough and those who qualify for supportive housing, typically the formerly homeless and others in need of help. The interior photo in The Times story is pretty darn slick for this type of thing, seeming to confirm our suspicions that lack of creativity and resourcefulness is usually more to blame than small budgets when ugly new buildings are put up.
New Homes for a Varied Cast [NY Times]
Schermerhorn House 1/3-Rented [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Nears Completion [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Gets Its Skin [Brownstoner] GMAP
Development Watch: 160 Schermerhorn Tops Out [Brownstoner] P*Shark
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Rising [Brownstoner] DOB
Some More 411 on the “Schermerhorn House” [Brownstoner]
Calm down people – we’re all important and deserve cheap housing.
Absolutely agree, snark. Ergo the need for support.
But in Africa they do not get large amounts of government $$ for their “music and art making”.
if this all private $$$, what’s there to say – it’s private $$$ and their choice. If this is public $$$, then heck yeah it’s up for debate, criticism, etc. There are tons of people with BIG needs in this city. So when those people are locked out and only ARTIST can apply, that’s crap. Not saying artist does deserve this but to say others are NOT APPLICABLE – that’s crap, crap, crap.
I didn’t come to this city, stay in this city, like this city simply because of the arts. if artists are gone from the city, yeah I would miss them. Missing them is one thing but I aint buying that NYC would be poop with out them. I don’t want to diminish the value artists are to the city but let’s not overstate the value either.
“LOL!!!! why don’t you tell some hungry children in africa that art is a “part of your being” and right up there with food, clothing, and shelter. they will tell you exactly who is out of touch with reality.”
The difference is that I’m supportive of this development and you turned it around and tried to say nannies are a necessity.
You clearly haven’t been to Africa either, or you’d know that some of their music and art making is what SUSTAINS them through their horrible ordeals with death and famine.
Music and Art are INTEGRAL to their daily life.
You are simply ignorant, and for that, I can not be upset.
11217 -my friend! I just want to say nannies are not for just the rich anymore – they have become a necessity for working parents.
If i was to have a baby within the next year – I would only be allowed 3 months off from my job at 75% pay. Then b/c i am the breadwinner, I would have to return to work. So who will watch my baby? Both our moms are sorta far away. I WOULD have to have a nanny as both of us need to work.
and I make less than 90K a year working in the Record Biz
“oh come on. nannies play a key role in raising children, which is a pretty damned important contribution to society. by contrast, people in the arts create things that are luxuries — movies, tv, music, paintings — that are nearly always expendable from a basic needs standpoint, and that are frequently total crapola. ”
As if nannies create good people? Hardly think so. People in the arts create luxuries? Sure I need a sandwich more than I need a painting, but that’s if we we still hunter-gathers. We’re not. The arts are important to what we are as human beings. As for what’s crapola- don’t blame artists for that. They reflect society in general. Crapola people- crapola art.
Sure a secretary or a nanny has a right to a decent place to live- who doesn’t- so in the vein of rob’s comments, let them find roommates and live in less expensive neighborhoods. Why should I subsidize an apartment for a nanny who workd for a rich Park Slope family over a place for a lighting technician who works at a Broadway show I enjoyed. Let the parents pay their nannies decent salaries or- again in the same vein as rob- let those parents not have children until they can afford to raise them themselves.
Whether you buy a 500K home or a million-dollar one, the amount you pay your nanny is probably the same — and thus her (it is always her) ability to pay her own rent.
Personally, no, I don’t think nannies are a necessity, I don’t have one. But while I think daycare is great for 2 year olds, for infants it can be a little hectic, and, in my experience, many parents choose to have a nanny at that stage even if it costs them half their salary.
> “isn’t NYC pretty insignicant when it comes to the arts nowadays?”
NYC is losing it’s role and an incubator, as a place for emerging artists. The cost of living and lack of affordable housing, studio and performance space are the obvious reasons why.
If the trend continues, we will become a museum city only, a venue for art by the famous and the dead only.
And what a shame that would be.