[New York Close Up]
--Okay. Go?
[Caroline Woolard, artist]
I store things in secret spots around the city--
spaces that are forgotten or unused.
[Greenwich Village, Manhattan]
Like ceiling panels.
They hide the guts of buildings--
the breathing systems and nervous systems.
There's millions of square tiles above our heads,
waiting for other uses,
welcoming other desires.
I'm interested in looking at systems
and asking them to do something that they didn't want me to do.
I'm Caroline Woolard.
I'm an artist, and I want to talk about what's often unseen in the process of making art--
the systems that make art possible.
I want to talk about the connection between art and real estate in New York City.
["Caroline Woolard Flips the Real Estate Script"]
When I was in art school, I would always ask the question no one wanted to answer--
"How do you survive in New York City?"--
and everyone would brush it aside and say something like,
"Aren't you too young to care about something like that?"
But for me, and for most artists I know,
the ability to make art--
to sit with our dreams, to try and fail and try again--
is tied very, very closely to real estate.
The only way you can make art that isn't about the market
is to have reliable access to affordable space.
I moved to New York City in 2002,
and since then, rents have gone up dramatically.
[75% increase from 2000 to 2012] [*Office of the New York City Comptroller]
In 2012, renters earning between twenty and forty grand--
that's people like me--
spent 41% percent of their income on rent.
And for most artists I know, it's more like 80% percent,
because we rent an apartment and a studio.
Brooklyn is now the most expensive real estate market in the country.
As of May 2015, median rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $2,696.
So how do artists manage in this environment?
Artists I know in New York City fall into three categories:
One: They are barely able to make time for art
because they work all day to cover market-rate rent;
Two: They have some quirky cheap rent thing that they've figured out
and they cling to it for dear life;
Or three: They have family money and they used it to buy property
and now they're landlords.
But what if there was another way to think about real estate?
The thing I want to talk about today is
Four: The ability to organize to stay put.
[East Williamsburg, Brooklyn]
This is my first real studio space.
I'm not here anymore, but let me tell you how we got it.
After I graduated school in 2007,
I wanted every penny I made to go into my work,
not into some landlord's hands.
So I tried not paying rent--
crashing in friends' places, sleeping in a backyard shed, on a rooftop--
doing all the kinds of things that someone like me,
with educational privilege and comfortable places to fall back on,
would romanticize as radical.
But then, an old classmate invited me and a bunch of friends to build out a space together.
I was 24.
We found an 8,000 square foot space for $8,000 a month.
You know how you have to pay first, last, and security to move in?
Well that's twenty-four grand just to get the keys.
We took out a loan from my classmate's parents
We cut the pipes and sold them for scrap.
We put in toilets and sinks.
We took dead rats out of walls.
Most of us got involved in the space to save money;
but over time, we became a family.
[Elizabeth Hurst, musician and studio manager]
At some point I realized that over eight years,
we will have paid our landlord $960,000.
And this for an 8,000 square foot dilapidated studio space
that we know we'll be priced out of when our lease is up
and our landlord charges as much as he can.
I moved out because I knew the space would disappear
and I wanted to put my effort into something that would last for longer.
--[WOOLARD] And I'll spend a little bit of time on this,
--being like, "This is what's possible if we have financing."
It turned out this meant working with more than just my small community of arts graduates.
--[PAULA SEGAL] I'm going to say,
[Paula Segal, attorney and organizer] --"We're ready to start pooling not just our time and our creativity,"
--"but, it appears, also our money."
[Risa Shoup, non-profit director] --And then you're just going to take the mic from me and keep going.
[Middle Collegiate Church, East Village]
--[WOOLARD] Well, I guess there's a line around the block, so...
--it's crazy!
This is the first meeting of a new group that I'm facilitating
with organizers Paula Segal, Mark Scott,
and over 300 other New Yorkers.
--[WOOLARD] I feel totally overwhelmed!
--[MAN] Yeah, I bet!
--[WOOLARD] You should sign in...
It's called the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative.
We're fighting money with money,
using the dark arts of finance to create affordable space.
--[WOOLARD] We want New York City to become a national model
--for affordable commercial space.
In a real estate investment cooperative, members are investors.
We pool our money with the primary goal of community building rather than profit making.
We'd support worker cooperatives, artists, and community groups.
We can guarantee that the rent remains affordable
because we hold the land in market-protected trust.
There's a huge movement for community land trusts in New York City at the moment.
I'm just one person contributing to it.
--[SEGAL] Are you here because you want to see
--development without displacement in your neighborhood?
[WOOLARD] The beauty of the investment cooperative is that anyone can invest.
$10 gets you a vote in the cooperative.
--[WOOLARD] We now have $1.2 million in member investor pledges,
--so give a hand...
[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]
--So now you'll hear some case studies about how people have done this in other places,
--and then we'll talk through some specific examples in New York City
--that need some investment...
This is by far the most ambitious collective project I've ever been involved in,
but it's going to take a really long time.
Right now, this is where I live.
It's a community of two--
or three if you include our cat--
and it's very weird.
This is the first time in twelve years that I haven't had at least five roommates--
that I haven't lived in a collective--
and it changes the way I make art.
Yes, this is a really nice place.
It's my partner's ex's mom's rental apartment--
the quirky rent thing I was talking about.
So what do I do right now?
The most meaningful thing I can do
is not just to make art about the worlds I want to see;
it's to get involved in making those worlds outside the studio.
I'm an art school graduate who rejects art school aspirations of constant movement--
of global biennials and studios in many countries.
Truly transformative work takes so much more time than a month-long show
or a short video like this one.
To change yourself and the city, you have to commit to that city
and find other people who are committed, too.
You could say I'm an artist who's waking up to the power of organizing.
Hopefully, I'll see you in a meeting.
[For more about NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative: nycreic.com]
If you're interested in this work,
here are some organizations that you might want to look into:
The Cooper Square Committee;
Fourth Arts Block;
596 Acres;
Black Land Matters;
The Artist Studio Affordability Project;
and many more that I'm forgetting right now.