San Francisco Prioritizes Artist Housing

Here in NYC, the idea of setting aside affordable housing for artists is considered politically poisonous. The reasoning is that as soon as you designate housing - our city’s most precious and sought-after resource - for a particular occupation or industry, then the flood gates inevitably open. “Why not affordable housing for nurses, or firefighters, or teachers?” the people will say.

I’ve heard this argument again and again from elected officials at the city and state levels. Even organizations like the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts buy into this facile reasoning.

Thankfully, not everyone is so shortsighted. Luis Cancel, the newly appointed Director of Cultural Affairs for the City and County of San Francisco has come right out of the gate declaring that affordable housing for the city’s artists is a top priority. (Amazingly, the city hasn’t yet crumbled to the ground!) Cancel is actually a long-time New Yorker, where he has a 25-year history of arts administration and advocacy, mostly recently as Executive Director of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center.

I wonder if the powers that be in New York realize just how close the city is to being permanently displaced as America’s great cultural powerhouse. Chronically ignoring basic infrastructure needs while relying on ever-fading memories of Greenwich Village in the 1950s isn’t what I consider a viable long term cultural policy.