Brooklyn

Finding Affordable Housing Becoming a "Creative" Challenge

Wednesday, March 5, 2008, 04:51pm
Submitted by Jonathan Sills

Gorilla Coffee at Fifth Avenue and Park Place in Brooklyn's Park Slope is filled day and night with hipster-looking folk sipping weapons-grade java and tapping away peacefully on their mac laptops in spite of the noisy, punk-rock soundtrack. On the very rare occasion that we are both in Park Slope during the day and at liberty to stroll around, my wife and I often wonder what all these people do for a living in order to spend their lives sitting in a coffee shop. Many, we figured were trust-fund babies, the others, we thought, must be self-employed, you know, "creative types."

Well, figures in an article titled Brooklyn's 'Creative Crescent' In Danger of A Drought in today's New York Observer, prove us to have been right, well, partially anyway. Apparently, "Park Slope ranks the No. 1 most creative neighborhood in the borough with 3,500 independently employed designers and independent artists in residence..." ahead of Williamsburg and BoCoCa (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens). These people are so prevalent in fact, that the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) refers to northern and eastern Brooklyn as the "Creative Crescent."

However, the point of the article was not point out just how many people work out of the borough's coffee shops, but that seeing them all there all day everyday tapping away may become a thing of the past, and soon. Understanding that artists and other self-employed people are often at the vanguard of colonizing new areas for residential uses, like parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the BEDC is concerned that rising property values and prices in northern and eastern Brooklyn will force these people to move elsewhere in the city to find affordable living and working accommodation.

The article quotes one performance artist who says, "I used to live in Cobble Hill, then I was priced out and moved to Fort Greene. Now, I've been priced out again so I'm moving to Bed-Stuy."

The issue of affordability and a diverse mix of uses, building types, populations and retail in a neighborhood was certainly one that Jane Jacobs understood well, and it is an issue that is becoming serious in the minds of many New Yorkers today also as property prices, for both purchasing and renting, continue to increase, or at least, remain high compared to salaries.

Do you think that the city government has a responsibility to make sure New Yorkers of all types, working in all kinds of industries can still live in the city, or is it an individual's responsibility to make sure they make enough money to afford accommodation whatever it costs, or is it both? What do you think?