No, all the artists are probably not leaving NYC

It’s hard to quantify but the young and creative are still moving to the Big Apple

Richard Taittinger
Richard Taittinger

For as long as NYC has had artists it’s been scared of losing them. And when they aren’t gentrifying your neighborhood, they are getting priced out of it.

“I never rest in New York,” photographer Brian Palmer told WNYC, before moving from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. “I always feel like I have to be doing something work-related.”

Most New Yorkers have a story about their creative friend who couldn’t make it work in NYC’s super expensive housing market. But are more artists really leaving now than in the past?

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“We’ve seen, actually, an increase in visual artists in New York City over the last decade,” Adam Forman, the Center for an Urban Future, which studies the issue, told WNYC. “So without question, people are still coming here.”

However, he noted that while most young artists come to attend art school, they are more likely to be burdened with college debt, making it difficult to survive. [WNYC]Christopher Cameron