Pursuits
Dream Apartments for $582 a Month -- If You're a Starving Artist
- Cities are eager to lend them a hand to keep them around
- `You can create a community that has a broader impact'
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Mary Waters’s application for her dream apartment included lots of the usual stuff: a couple years of tax returns, her passport and proof she has a Social Security number. Oh, and several necklaces strung with Tibetan turquoise and Ugandan paper beads.
She had to prove she was a struggling artist, and the struggling part was easy. Waters makes less than $28,000 a year from sales to a handful of customers and part-time work as a massage therapist. But to score a $582-a-month studio in the Artspace Loveland Lofts, she also had to answer questions about her devotion to jewelry making and fostering the arts. It’s a screening process that sculptors, writers and musicians across the U.S. are going through in a new spin on affordable housing.