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A job, a gig and a hustle

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Keeping Your Artists Close to Home 

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by DW in musicians, New Orleans

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Article is by Katy Reckdahl, a great local writer.

Policymakers have debated how best to support the city’s culture in a time of rising rents and stagnant wages. If done correctly, artist housing slated to open next year in the former Andrew J. Bell Junior High School in the Treme neighborhood could provide an important model for cities looking to preserve and support traditional culture through affordable housing.

“We have the opportunity to show how vibrant arts are essential to our humanity in New Orleans,” said Stephanie McKee, the artistic director of Junebug Productions, a nonprofit that will be based in one of Bell’s community spaces.

 

In late 2005, not long after Katrina, musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis asked Habitat to establish several dozen houses that musicians could qualify for through sweat equity along with a 20-year, interest-free loan.

But, early on, Habitat found fewer musicians qualified than it had hoped. It hadn’t predicted the level of bad credit and outstanding debt or the general lack of documentation. So Habitat reworked its process, using specially earmarked money from donors to help some musicians pay off small outstanding debts and working with many others to find alternative ways of proving income for the Habitat-underwritten loans.

“Normally, we get tax returns and wage statements,” says Marguerite Oestricher, Habitat’s chief advancement officer. “But with the Musicians’ Village, we had to get pretty creative. Because many musicians live in a cash economy, we’d ask them, ‘Where are you working?’ and we’d take a note from a club owner, saying that so-and-so plays here two days a week.”

Though it took some heavy lifting to create, the Village is now bustling with musicians. The delinquency rate on loans there has been very low, Oestricher said.

 

 

Learning from their artist-housing predecessors, Butler and McKee are going to start convening meetings for potential tenants by early 2017, even though the property won’t start taking applications until the fall, to encourage them to get their paperwork in order.

“We know that there are certain documents that they have to have to apply,” she said. “So we will ask, ‘Can we connect you with someone who can help you get your taxes done?’ Or ‘Even if you don’t have a bank account, can you get a letter from your employer to confirm your income?’”

“We want to get on top of this before this process even begins,” she said. “We’ve got to just keep pounding away at it. There will be no other opportunity like this.”

Keeping Your Artists Close to Home – Shelterforce – National Housing Institute

Word origins

job
1557, in phrase jobbe of worke , perhaps a variant of gobbe "mass, lump" (c.1400, see gob). Sense of "work done for pay" first recorded 1660. On the job "hard at work" is from 1882. Jobber "one who does odd jobs" is from 1706.

gig
1570 "light carriage, small boat." A job usually for a specified time; especially : an entertainer's engagement, first known use 1926

hustle
"To get in a quick, illegal manner" is 1840 in Amer.Eng.; "to sell goods aggressively" is 1887. The noun sense of "illegal business activity" is first recorded 1963 in Amer.Eng.

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Tags

African-American organizing airbnb Alton Sterling Banking barter Baton Rouge Big Freedia Bill Lavender Blue Linen Night book review buskers capitalism Carrie Brownstein Cheryl Gerber Cleveland model COVID-19 DIY Doreen Ketchens drinking culture Evergreen Cooperatives Fensterstock festivals French Quarter Gawker Ghalib gig housing hustle illegal economy informal economy intellectual property interviews Introduction Jackson Square job Katy Reckdahl labor organizing MACCNO makerculture makerspace Mardi Gras Indians Marx Mr. Chill Music Under New York New Orleans New York City Nicole Sallak Anderson outsider culture police Reckdahl renters Rich Campanella Rifkin RIP Scotty Cathcart Hill street vending Sweden unemployment Universal basic income Wandergesellen work Xavier Review

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