During their 20 years of living in New York City, Theresa Buccheister racked up all sorts of laurels in the world of independent theater, including an Obie and a glowing profile in Interview magazine that touted their contributions to the stage.
But that run came to an abrupt end in 2024, when Buchheister, 45, decided they could no longer afford to live here. That summer, the then-artistic director of the Brooklyn theater company The Brick moved back in with their parents in Kansas. Buchheister remains there.
“I've been back and forth a lot, but it's cheaper for me to live in Kansas and fly to New York like 14 times a year than it is for me to live in New York,” Buchheister said.
Stories like Buchheister’s, told by other departing creatives, have increasingly become part of the city’s cultural narrative, usually with recollections of New York City neighborhoods where creatives used to share stoops and walkups with tech workers, Wall Street types and other high earners, before being priced out.
A newly introduced bill in Albany attempts to slow the exodus of artists, by making it easier to provide affordable housing preferences for “individuals who are involved in artistic activities,” including visual and performing artists, and musicians.
Assemblymember Keith Powers, who represents parts of Manhattan's East Side and is the bill’s sponsor, along with Erik Bottcher in the State Senate, said the measure addresses a “legal gray area” in the city’s Human Rights Law that makes it unclear if affordable housing marked for artists would be discriminatory against non-artists.
“So we want to clarify that it would essentially allow the city and partners in the housing world to be able to build new artist housing like we have in places like Manhattan Plaza,” Powers said, referring to the federally subsidized housing complex on the West Side that has housed thousands of performing artists since the 1970s.
The measure lands as New Yorkers contend with a housing affordability crisis that has kept vacancy rates down and rents up across the five boroughs.
Theresa Buchheister, with their parents Carol and Jim Buchheister, in their Kansas home.
But Powers contends that the housing crisis is “uniquely impacting” artists. The former city councilmember said he frequently hears from New Yorkers who work in the arts who say they had to work two or three jobs to get by and were forced to move “further and further out in the city.”
He argues that housing benefits for the artistic community would not necessarily come at the expense of non-artists.
“We should be lifting all boats,” he said. “ This bill is one of many of the tools in our toolbox to help build a more affordable New York City.”
Artists have been fleeing neighborhoods traditionally associated with the city’s creative life, according to a January report by the Center for an Urban Future. The report found that the population of artists dropped by 32% on the Upper West Side, 18% in Chelsea and 56% on the Lower East Side and Chinatown over the last decade.
According to the report, many artists moved to the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, like East New York and Brownsville. It also found that 4.4% of artists had left the city since 2019.
Stephen Louis, a distinguished fellow and counsel at New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law, said any attempt to provide housing benefits to members of a particular profession, including artists, would raise questions about fairness.
“What's the makeup of that profession? Does it tend to be representative of a particular race, religion, whatever?” he asked. “So if you're favoring that profession, you're also at least possibly favoring whatever group is heavily represented in that profession, and therefore you're possibly discriminating against those who are not as heavily involved in that profession.”
Randi Berry, the executive director of IndieSpace, a nonprofit organization that supports members of the city’s independent theater world, said like many other New Yorkers, artists had to contend with the high cost of residential real estate.
“But they also end up having to pay to create their work in their rehearsal spaces or their studio spaces, and they also have to pay to perform their work,” Berry said. “So we're facing three layers of real estate affordability issues.”
Buchheister said they were earning “less than $20,000 a year” to run The Brick, while toiling seven days a week. Other work they had done for years in the world of commercial animation, directing voiceovers for the cartoon Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese, dried up in 2023 when that series wasn’t renewed for another season. By May 2024, the struggle to afford a $1,400 rent in Williamsburg began to take its toll.
“I couldn't even get on a train,” Buchheister said. “I had to just eat free food that people left over” at work.
Buchheister said they continued to search for full-time opportunities in New York but were uncertain if anything would come through, given their age. They expressed hope that the city would build more affordable housing for artists, but said that as someone who no longer holds residence in the five boroughs, they might not be eligible if it did become available.
“Which is hard,” Buchheister said. “But even if it wouldn't benefit me, I know how many people it would benefit, and it would make it so that people like me wouldn't have to leave.”
This story was updated with additional information about the bill's sponsorship.
