Artist Relocation Program
What they did back in 1999, with a lot of assistance from homeowner Mark Barone, was to recruit artists of all types, painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, etc, to the town, give them drastically reduced rates on home loans to purchase the houses, then give them low rates so that they could afford to fix up the homes and restore them to their original historic value.
And, oddly enough, it worked. Home values jumped, neighborhoods literally changed overnight, Mr. Barone was able to get a lot of money for his home and off he left to try to change other cities in other areas around the country.
Many other cities have decided to try the same sort of thing, hoping that they end up with the same results as Paducah. Mr. Barone ended up in the Syracuse, NY area, where he tried to help one community, known as the Near West Side, change the way he’d done in Paducah. With support from Syracuse University, he thought he would be able to affect change; it didn’t work.
It didn’t work because the dynamic was much different in Syracuse than it was in Paducah. Sure, the Near West Side only had 32% of residents who contributed to the tax base of the city, but the city overall wasn’t in the kind of financial distress that Paducah was in. Local banks didn’t have the same reasons to offer low rate loans to anyone the way that Paducah did. Eventually, Mr. Barone’s association with the university was cut, and he was gone.
With the changing economy, though, many other communities around the country are trying to revitalize neighborhoods where many people have lost their homes to foreclosure. In Detroit, for instance, some artists are moving into homes that are literally costing them less than $150, and are then able to obtain loans to do some minor development to bring these houses up to code. Artists are happy with these homes, and work in helping other artists to come to these areas to live.
Everyone is happy, right? Well, not so fast. Some members of the community, which were low income, are crying foul, saying they’re not able to get the same types of deals on home loans, and they’ve lived in those areas for years. The issue, of course, is not that the artists are rich, but that they have better credit histories, and of course better jobs in some fashion, with enough money on hand to buy these low cost homes.
Overall, though, it’s a win-win for the cities and the artists who have the homes. Some have even used the homes as museums, where they can show their artwork to what they hope is an appreciative community. And, it seems, some of them are accepted into the community. That’s not such a bad thing at all.
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“In Detroit, for instance, some artists are moving into homes that are literally costing them less than $150″
That sounds too good to be true. I think I need to immigrate and change professions. Or do you think they would class web development as an art?
David@SEM Labs´s last blog ..mod_rewrite Quick Reference and Cheat Sheet
I think this kind of program would stir up more negative effects than it’s worth. I see the benefit of the program, but as pointed out the local residents could get the short end of the stick. It may not look good favoring outsiders over the long time residents.