CARISSA MARSH
Staff Writer
For such an arts-centered city, Santa Monica has been missing the mark when it comes to providing affordable housing for its creative residents. But change is on the horizon, as the city makes small steps toward providing more low-cost housing for its artistic community.
It is not easy to understand why there is a lack of affordable live/work spaces for artists in the city. Santa Monica is home to one of the largest concentrations of creative employment in the United States, more than six times the national average, and 43 percent of the city’s adults make all or part of their income in an arts-related field, according to a recent study by the city’s Cultural Affairs division.
With stats like these, it is no wonder that Santa Monica considers support of the arts a basic city service. Moreover, the Santa Monica Arts Commission’s (SMAC) mission statement says that it believes that a culturally diverse community of artists and arts organizations is essential to the cultural, educational, social and economic vitality of the city.
But one of the commission’s main responsibilities highlights an important and evolving issue in Santa Monica— the commission’s promise to maintain affordable artist living and working conditions in the community. So, where are they?
Commissioner Larry Shapiro, who also heads the Artist Live Work Task Force Committee, answered that question matter-of-factly: there are none. Well, almost.
“We really don’t have any public work space in Santa Monica,” he said. Despite seven years of work to develop artist live/work spaces, the city has yet to build one.
Artist live/work housing units differ from traditional living spaces in that they typically have higher ceilings, more durable surfaces and a loft for sleeping. Overall, the main design goal of live/work spaces is function and the work part of the equation is the overriding factor.
“The most desirable thing for artists is just big, open spaces,” Shapiro said. He said a good artist space would measure about 1,000 to 2,000 square feet, the types of spaces that can easily be found in old warehouse districts but not as easily secured in Santa Monica.
Unfortunately, the absence of low-cost live/work housing is causing a sort of “brain drain” of the artist talent in Santa Monica as artists leave for cities that do offer more affordable spaces.
“The amount of artists that have left the city is a large, large number,” Shapiro said. “Not because they don’t want to live here but because they can’t afford to.”
Shapiro said the main reason there are no artist live/work spaces is the cost of land.
“Real estate is so expensive that it is literally impossible to own property that is appropriate for [artist live/work space] with all the other competing interests, like senior housing,” he said. He added that these competing interests are usually on the forefront of getting land and money.
Commissioner Jan Williamson agreed that real estate is the biggest hurdle when it comes to developing artist live/work spaces.
“Santa Monica is one of the most expensive places to buy land and if you are going to buy land either for an investment property or as a homeowner you have to be in a certain income bracket and that isn’t necessarily your usual artist,” she explained.
Williamson said there are other issues involved too, such as the fact that there simply is not a lot of free space to build new housing in the city.
Yet another issue is government funding, or the lack of it.
“When a lot of development happens in the city it is through state and federal funding, and they define how the space should be,” Shapiro said. In essence, this means that the city cannot use government funding to create low cost artist housing.
“That’s what makes it tough. It has to be funded in a different way,” Shapiro said.
These other ways include securing money through foundations and grants to non-profits.
For many other California cities, such as Ventura, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Francisco, live/work spaces come out of redevelopment.
“Most cities [create artist live/work spaces] to revitalize blighted areas,” he said. The problem with Santa Monica is that “most people don’t see a need for redevelopment here,” Shapiro said.
Some developers have been taking an advantage of the city’s zoning variances by building artist live/work spaces in the light manufacturing and industrial areas of the city that are normally off-limits to residential construction. This allows developers to build bigger units than they would usually be able to build simply by calling them live/work spaces.
“Real estate developers are buying properties in the areas that are zoned for artist studios and building artist studios, but then artists aren’t even able to afford them,” Williamson said, as the units end up being far out of the financial reach of artists.
Thus the only viable solution for artists right now comes in the form of a nonprofit residential arts center called 18th Street. Williamson is the executive director.
“18th Street is the only place dedicated to [providing artist live/work spaces] because of our nonprofit mission,” Williamson said. “There’s nothing comparable to 18th Street.”
The 18th Street Arts Center— which is funded through grants, donors and rental income— is planning on redeveloping its property to build even more artist live/work spaces.
Currently, the complex has twelve units, three of which are for international artists. Williamson said the new facility would more than triple in size, including anywhere between 30 and 60 units. However, the redevelopment is not expected to be completed for another three to four years, she said.
The housing units at 18th Street range from 400 square feet to a couple thousand square feet, but only about half of the complex’s 25 housing units are live-in studios. The other half is day studios that are rented out by artists or arts organizations. Williamson said the living spaces at 18th Street are by far the cheapest live/work option in the city, at $1 per square foot.
When a vacancy opens up at the center, artists can submit applications, which are then reviewed by their peers who are invited to sit on an artist panel. This peer panel makes recommendations to the center’s administration who then interview the top three candidates before making a final selection.
While any Los Angeles resident can apply for the center’s residency program, artists must submit a portfolio of their work to show they are a professional artist.
This idea of what is the definition of an artist and who is eligible for artist live/work spaces is just another problem the city, not nonprofits like 18th Street, will face in the future when trying to develop affordable artist housing, Shapiro said.
Shapiro stressed that the arts commission has been “breaking their backs” to get more artist live/work space into the city but certain unavoidable obstacles have blocked their attempts to do so. Still, it is not because the city does not want to add more of these low cost housing units for artists, Shapiro said.
“The city has always been behind us verbally,” he said. “There’s always been a very positive climate for artist in Santa Monica but it’s just priorities I guess.”
However, things are looking up. Artist live/work space is slowly becoming a bigger priority as a provision to add more units was included in the city cultural plan, Creative Capital, adopted in February.
Creative Capital is a plan that presents Santa Monica residents’ collective vision for the future of arts and culture within their city and strategies for it fulfillment over the next 10 years.
According to the Creative Capital executive summary, rising costs, the loss of affordable real estate and a lack of infrastructure all threaten the cultural diversity and vibrancy of the seaside city. To fight this trend, there is a recommendation in the plan to develop policies and ordinances that encourage and even mandate the creation of affordable artist live/work spaces and day studios in new residential and industrial development areas, such as the Light Manufacturing Studio District.
The first step toward fulfillment of this goal is the proposed development in the Civic Center.
“The City Council voted to include live/work spaces in the new Civic Center, but there is no set number,” Shapiro said, referring to how many units would be available in the proposed development.
Shapiro said the program in ongoing and that there have been some changes, but that live/work spaces are “on the bill.”
Another positive step is the more active involvement of the city’s Planning Commission, which approves zoning, with the Arts Commission in regards to the artist housing issue.
“The big change is that the Planning Commission has come on board to overtly see [the development of more artist live/work spaces] happen,” Shapiro said. “And that is going to make all the difference in the world.”
Shapiro explained that the Arts Commission is simply an advisory committee and that it does not have a lot of power to affect change. But by teaming up with the Planning Commission, SMAC now has more authority to make things happen.
“They are very alert now to the situation that artists don’t have places to live and work and will help developers look that way,” he said. “Hopefully the trend will be to go toward artists live/work spaces at a low cost.”
Furthermore, the recently passed Developer’s Percent for the Arts law may boost development. The law requires private developers to either include some artistic element in every new building constructed in the city or to contribute a percent of their development funds to a city arts pool.
Shapiro said he is hopeful that the percent law will put a huge flood of money into the arts program that can then be used to build artist live/work spaces in the city.
Taken together, these changes look like steps in the right direction for Santa Monica, though it will take time to reverse the loss of affordable housing and woo back the creative minds that have come to be a source of pride for cultural city.
05-18-2007