Housing

Photo by Lawrence White

Artist Adam Frelin and architect Barbara Nelson, in collaboration with local governments of three cities in upstate New York, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, and dozens of other partners, will illuminate hundreds of vacant homes over a period of several months. The project will bring attention to the overwhelming problem of vacancy in these cities, which are often referred to as legacy or post-industrial. The project seeks to beautifully and creatively spark a higher volume of dialogue and eventually action by bringing more creative attention to the spatial environment in need of revitalization. Breathing Lights also includes a summit on the problem of vacancy in an effort to translate this project into additional economic benefits.

Image courtesy of: PUSH Buffalo

PUSH Buffalo is a multi-issue organization, combining community organizing, political advocacy, housing development, and more. By staying focused on a specific neighborhood over a long period of time and maintaining deep roots in its residents and organizers, PUSH has found itself naturally including arts-based organizing strategies into its activism and community development work to boost effectiveness. In order to focus on comprehensive community development, PUSH created its housing arm, the Buffalo Neighborhood Stabilization Company, to develop and maintain affordable housing for its residents. Aaron Bartley, Executive Director, identified key cultural factors for successful community organizing and housing development: relevance, dynamism, energy, and fun, even if the issues themselves are technical or dry. PUSH has its own drumming and dancing troupe, has supported mural development by people living in the neighborhood, held two summer concerts per year showcasing local and regional talent, and more. They work to make these practices internal to the organization as a way of building community, strengthening, and celebrating their work. And now, a yearly community congress identified the need for an old school building to become and arts and community center, which is now under development, and will add important value to its housing development and other initiatives.

Photo by Alex Barber, courtesy of Project Row Houses

Project Row Houses (PRH), an early practitioner of arts-based cultural and community-based housing development, is focused on the preservation of a mixed income African American community in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Houston. PRH began in the 1980’s as a project by and for local African American artists, and began by salvaging and preserving several vernacular row houses for artists’ studios and galleries. Building on the attention they received as innovative, socially engaged artists, PRH has successfully preserved and developed over 50 units of housing as well as continued to build several spaces for galleries and artists in the culturally historic row house style. Since then, the Third Ward of Texas, located proximately to downtown, has seen increasing real estate development pressure that is making it difficult to retain the historic African American community and neighborhood environment, especially for those of low and moderate incomes who are particularly vulnerable to long-term unemployment. PRH is now partnering with churches, landowners, renters, politicians, and more in the neighborhood to convene the Emancipation Economic Development Council. The Council is pursuing several strategies, including land trusts, anchor institution development strategy, and others to address community stabilization and wealth creation comprehensively and in ways that address structural dynamics, but beginning necessarily with the ability to remain in housing. This partnership allows the arts to “stay nimble,” and not rely on arts-based leaders for everything that they may not be expert in.

Image courtesy of: Capitol Hill Housing

Capitol Hill Housing is an innovative community development corporation that develops affordable housing and mixed-use developments in the rapidly gentrifying Capitol Hill neighborhood and others throughout Seattle. This award-winning CDC creatively leverages partnerships with arts organizations to build affordable housing (as well as providing other spaces mixed uses). The 12th Avenue Arts building contains restaurants on the first floor, which are buoyed by two flexible theatre spaces, nonprofit office space, and 88 apartment units. Their forward-thinking, place-based strategy gives them deep local knowledge, making it easier to develop projects across a portfolio that incorporates affordable housing, the arts, and commercial activity.