Revitalizing San Francisco:
Heeding the Call for Artists’ Housing
• • • • • • • July 2024 • • • • • • •
Since before the pandemic, ArtHouse, a nonprofit for co-op artists live/work spaces and venues (arthousesf.org) has been publishing articles, speaking publicly, writing letters, meeting with potential supporters, and distributing printed matter about why artists are a vital part of the social fabric. There has been a shocking lack of response, in spite of an increasing number of city districts resembling ghost towns, and no one seems to have put two and two together: whenever artists have moved into derelict areas of San Francisco, those places became fashionable, gentrified, and tourist destinations.
In January, ArtHouse held a panel discussion at Manny’s, the restaurant, and the community forum at 16th and Valencia to discuss artists as underutilized assets. Wherever artists, musicians, and writers settle, it brings life to a neighborhood, filling it with the invisible but potent force of creative energy at work. People want to go there to absorb that energy and stimulate their imaginations, absorbing something new. The message resonated with a woman in the audience, who got in touch the next day to offer an introduction.
...before artists were forced out by rising rents and landlord policies, artists made up about 7% of the City’s population, somewhere around 50,000 people. This building is a start and will be a centerpiece, but it is not a solution.”
ArtHouse met a few days after with the executive vice president of a huge national hotel chain and toured a fabulous 112-year-old hotel in a particularly drab stretch of brutalist architecture on Market Street, where too many homeless druggies discourage tourists, regardless of how fantastic the hotel might be. There were two visits to the site, and then the vice president asked ArtHouse for a business plan.
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The business plan circulated among community members working to revitalize the area around the hotel. A few months later, the City awoke to interesting news: an anonymous donor gave a developer $100M to build artists’ housing near the hotel where the McKroskey Mattress Company has done business since 1899. This lovely old, light-filled structure, which has been the site of the Silent Film Festival and numerous other art events, will be torn down and replaced by a 17-story building that includes studio and rehearsal spaces as well as housing. Demolition is scheduled for 2025, with an anticipated building ready to open in 2027.
Thus far, there’s no estimate for what this “affordable” housing will cost tenants. In the flurry of press about the building, one source cited a maximum tenants income of 80% of the median city income, which is about $120K.
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While artists’ housing is a wonderful, necessary addition to the City’s housing stock, this project provides 102 units for artists and is expected to cost over $75M to build; observations over time indicate that there will be additional costs before completion. It rounds out the concentration of arts institutions—the Market Street theaters, performance spaces, symphony, opera, Jazz Center, and others—with a place for artists to live. However, before artists were forced out by rising rents and landlord policies, artists made up about 7% of the City’s population, somewhere around 50,000 people. This building is a start and will be a centerpiece, but it is not a solution.
To begin with, “affordable” is relative. If you’re making 80% of the median income, that’s $96K. You must be fairly famous to make that kind of income in the arts. Artists struggle for years to achieve that level of success. There needs to be a specification for minimum income, which is what most early-career artists make from their work. While this project offers a place for mid-to-late career artists, there probably needs to be more room for developing talent. Most people in the arts can only make a living from their work for a short time and need a job to pay the bills, at least part-time, until their star rises.
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Perhaps it is the nostalgia of a city native speaking. Still, yet another big box on the San Francisco landscape holds minimal appeal, even for a good cause. We are tearing down old buildings, constructed with only natural materials and a more gracious aesthetic, to put up newer big boxes filled with plastics and forever chemicals. Hundreds of city buildings are empty and could be renovated for a lot less than $100M. And there are far more displaced artists than could fit in the 102 units in this project. It may be the jewel in completing a performing arts nexus for the City, but the need for more such housing is immense. There are 61K empty units in the City. With new economic solutions, like corporate/nonprofit partnerships, there could be room for many more such buildings all over town.
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Last spring, The New Yorker published an article called “What’s Wrong with San Francisco, Really?” None of the pundits interviewed for the article mentioned that very few working artists live here anymore. Their products—performances, recordings, books, visual art, and other creative works —are readily available commodities. What is gone is the thousands and thousands of creative individuals in our midst. Creative energy, like love, is one of the things you can’t see, but you can feel it when it’s there. If you don’t know what’s missing, you might know that something feels off. But when efforts like 1687 Market and ArtHouse bring that energy back, the San Francisco everyone loved will be back, too.
P Segal is a San Francisco writer and organizer on the board of ArtHouseSF.org.
July 2024
