A bill in the New York Senate seeks to ease the path to affordable housing especially set aside for artists.
Jacob Anbinder, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, is a historian of the modern United States with a particular focus on the politics of cities and suburbs in the twentieth century. He researches how America’s most progressive cities become unaffordable for a significant portion of the population.
Anbinder says: “Legislators in Albany are understandably interested in preserving affordable housing for artists in particular. After all, it has been artists, among others, whose sweat equity and affection for New York have kept the city thriving during some of its darkest days. At the same time, we must not let a housing shortage as severe and widespread as the one that New York faces devolve into petty squabbles about who most deserves to live in the city.
“New York City anchors one of the most expensive metropolitan areas on the planet. It is also the poster child for a chronic housing shortage in the United States that has now risen to the level of a national emergency. When more and more people must compete for a static supply of homes, the result is gentrification. Renters and buyers in white-collar industries—or with inherited wealth—elbow out existing residents and striving newcomers with less lucrative jobs. This phenomenon produces the sterile, homogenous cities that appeal neither to the people who can still afford to live there nor to those who’ve been priced out.
“Whether artist, teacher, taxi driver, or food service worker, all who wish to call themselves New Yorkers deserve the opportunity to ‘make it there.’ To meet that goal, government and private industry must come together to build the vast amount of new housing that the city needs, wherever and whenever possible.”
More News from A&S
Faculty excellence in teaching and advising honored with 2026 awards
Teaching awards
