Artists for an Affordable New YorkA working document by New York City To Be Determined

Caroline Woolard, Susan Jahoda, and Stephen Korns

DEAR ARTIST (and/or college student, teacher, or staff member),

Why can’t artists stay put? Because short term leases end and rents go up. Why doesn’t Loft Law keep neighborhoods affordable? Because Loft Law buildings don’t have limited­equity agreements, so units are sold on the open market, driving real estate prices up for everyone. Why don’t politicians seem to care about artists? Because we are politically invisible. Why don’t affordable housing organizers see professionalized artists as a powerful group? Because we haven’t demonstrated our ability to organize and contribute. How might we stay? How might we frame housing as a human right?

RESIST

Artists who are professionalized with BFAs, MFAs, and PhDs can expand the term “artist” by including creative people who do not have degrees or itinerant lifestyles associated with being an “artist.” Artists can refuse to be represented by the use of language like “pioneering” in “empty” neighborhoods, instead forming alliances with artists who are long time residents, supporting Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts.

Artists can resist offers for short term exhibitions in neighborhoods and storefronts awaiting redevelopment. We can speak out against developer­led gentrification where artists serve planners and developers who profit from our resourcefulness, creativity, investment and labor.

Artists can urge elected officials and government agencies to require developers to make permanent, truly affordable housing, rather than giving tax breaks to developers whose “affordable housing” units in their market­rate projects only remain “affordable” for a limited period of time.

Artists can stop accepting rising rents and evictions in isolation, joining and creating a rotating credit and savings associations (susu) and anti­eviction networks.

SUPPORT

Artists can join existing coalitions for affordable housing, and collectively demand that the city preserve, create, and support both truly affordable housing and commercial space, like the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development’s inclusionary zoning campaign.

Artists can stand behind the policy brief of the Naturally Occurring Cultural District (here), seeing that cultural production and social change already go together, and that low­income people everywhere are looking for affordable housing.

Artists can learn about ways to take parcels of land off of the speculative market forever, working with groups like the New York City Community Land Initiative (http://nyccli.org).

CREATE

Artists with social, cultural, and financial power can urge wealthy art collectors and philanthropists to consider land­based philanthropy, donating land and buildings to community land trusts.

. Artists’ groups that start capital campaigns for affordable space can connect their work to long term

struggles directly, allocating a percentage of all money raised and all press opportunities to the larger movement for affordable space. Watch out for this headline: Artists Solve Affordability Problem! (for themselves)

Artists who make art about housing or real estate can connect interested viewers and press

Artists for an Affordable New YorkA working document by New York City To Be Determined

Caroline Woolard, Susan Jahoda, and Stephen Korns

coverage to long term initiatives.

If you are an artist, you are one of the 93,073 artists in New York City. Being one of so many might seem 1

like competition for your art career or your job search, but it’s good news for your ability to make social change. You and other artists and educators form a voting bloc upwards of 700,000 people strong. We can 2

form an anti­eviction network, as well as a project for radical reimagining of land ownership and urban spatial politics. Artists have done this in the past, and we can do it again.3

A Vision

To Be Determined (TBD) is an urban development project that sees artists as part of a growing constituency of low­income people. We are an intergenerational collective of artists that asks: How might artists demand, support, and create truly affordable housing in NYC?

We insist on the unity of artists and community organizers. Working in conjunction with the New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI), we learn together, make art, and initiate relationships across social spheres in order that we might belong to the city, and to each other, more equitably.

Art has the power to encourage honest dialog, cultivate empathy, and inspire hope. Artists move to New York City to make art with integrity but often understand themselves as itinerant strangers, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood without commitment to any one place. TBD aims to make space for artists who want to stay put; artists who see dialog, collaboration, and exchange with one’s neighbors over time as integral to a practice of social belonging.

We aim to create a resource for artists and a network of community land trusts with NYCCLI and others that provides affordable housing to all people in New York City. By providing templates and models for artist­led urban redevelopment, we will insist on affordable housing that extends beyond the creative class.

Opportunity

With Mayor Bill de Blasio in office, the New York City Community Land Initiative pilot in East Harlem gaining momentum, and increasing interest in artist­led urban redevelopment from artists, philanthropists, and developers alike, we have a window of opportunity. We can educate and organize ourselves (and other professionalized artists) whose personal and cultural geographies are shaped by rising rents. We believe that Community Land Trusts, co­housing, intentional living, and cooperatives, among other sustainable housing models and strategies, can bring wealth to neighborhoods rather than opportunities for displacement. We think this can happen through coalition­forming.

Relationships

The on­going project of TBD is to deepen the mutual interests and accountability of artists within communities. Recognizing that artists are not a singular and un­complex constituency, we are interested in how “artists” can join coalitions comprised of all sorts of people who desire to live affordably and intentionally. We see our project as a bridge between communities of interest.

1 According to the 2010 census, which tracks people who identify their primary occupation as artist, there are 93,073 artists in New York City (27,534 in Brooklyn).2 In fact, it’s also good for your career. With more artists, you can find more collaborators, meet more people who start artist­run spaces, and see an increased public that deeply understands your work. But that is for another essay, or another meeting.3 Fourth Arts Block bought 8 buildings for $8 from the City after 30 years of organizing, forming Cooper Square and FAB.

Artists for an Affordable New YorkA working document by New York City To Be Determined

Caroline Woolard, Susan Jahoda, and Stephen Korns

TBD collective members have joined the Education and Outreach working group of NYCCLI to learn about Community Land Trust strategies for New York City and to collaborate on cultural action and media production projects for the East Harlem Community Land Trust pilot. We are currently working together to make a video about the process that Picture the Homeless uses to count vacant properties. Just as E/O is working on a pilot in East Harlem with tenants rights organizations, TBD will work with professionalized artists to articulate the implications of affordable housing on future generations of artists in New York City, together with working poor, unemployed, and low income people. Let’s work together!

Love,New York City To Be Determined members Stephen Korns, Susan Jahoda, and Caroline Woolard

To join us, email info@nyctbd.comTo edit the document and add your name to it, go to: http://goo.gl/ZL5ifd

Bibliography

United States. Department of Housing Preservation & Development. NYC. N.p., 2014. Web. <http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/low_income.shtml>.

Further Reading

The Art Scab, http://insurgenttheatre.org/theory/theartscab.pdfLoft Living, Sharon ZukinTom Angotti http://tomangotti.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/five­things­you­can­do.pdfEvictions: Art and Spatial Politics, Rosalyn Deutsche

Tell Bill de Blasio!

Strategies fron NOCD: http://nocdnydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cover­letter.pdfPolicy brief from NOCD: http://nocdnydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/policy­brief.pdf

Get Involved

Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts (NOCD): http://nocdny.org/ArtHome: http://www.arthome.org/New York City To Be Determined http://nyctbd.comNew York City Community Land Initiative http://nyccli.orgArt and Labor http://artsandlabor.org/working­groups/The Real Esate Show April­May: http://www.jamesfuentes.com/realestate_pr.pdf

Thanks To Ryan Hickey at Picture the Homeless for welcoming us into NYCCLI’s work, to Caron Atlas for consistent reminders about the term “artist,” Paula Segal for refined goals/tactics and her work at 596Acres, Esther Robinson for ongoing dialog and her work at ArtHome, to Aaron Landsman for telling us to make it short, to my cooperative house, and to Megan Hustad and Stephanie Knipe for editing and ongoing support.