Art, rent, affordable housing and 3D printer.

The arts alone, I’ve been told, brought in close to $110 billion or more to New York city last year — during the pandemic.

Now, what kind of arts? Certainly not the Museums. But could it be fine arts made by artists, 99.9 percent of whom couldn’t afford to stay in the city, talk less of making enough for a day’s meal? Or are we talking about performed arts by artistes in music studios, in media houses, on YouTube and in front of TV studio the cameras?

I think I’ll settle for the last, and will not throw in the catwalk and broadway since social distancing made it impossible to host a fashion show or to go see a broadway show. I’ll leave out poetry and literary works. We all know you either have to be a President or be known to have worked for one to get a publisher look your way.

Now let’s put all these professional class of groups together under the term “cultural arts”. Let’s assume they all performed online and at traditional venues, and there was no pandemic. Then ask, could they have possibly bring in the same amount or more?

My answer is no. They were able to bring in this much because physical performing space was moved online. And when you work online as an artist or artiste, things like offices, admins., support and other fixed assets are far removed from being secondary. The only primary overhead you have to consider is equipments, food and rent.

This is a proof that if we are able to fix rent in New York city, we might not only enliven the cultural arts, we’ll do more than boost the artistic instinct or artists, poets and writers in our midst. We’ll also end up with a revamped system whereby New Yorkers of all races and incomes have spare resources to start collecting art works again.

Last time something like this happened was in the 1950’s to early and mid 70’s, after which everyone in New York city started working just to pay rent, and to barely keep up with constantly ballooning rent rates every year. Rent and survival takes up all income, thus leaving nothing to spare to enjoy patronizing the fine arts, literature and cultural arts.

Even worse, majority of schools in the New York city have removed these studies from the curriculum, and I don’t think they are ever coming back.

But to keep the artists and the artistes we have in the city today functioning, performing and practicing their profession to the fullest, we have to fix rent for them, for all New Yorkers and make housing affordable for all again.

And this I plan to do by rearanging space rather than get bogged down with zoning laws of 1916 through the 50’s into the 70’s.

If elected Mayor, city of New York, I will redefine our heritage laws and introduce industrial grade 3D printers to developers (old and new) as I need to get them to start printing affordable multipurpose dwellings all over the city.

Advantage of 3D assisted structures is in the fact that:

• they are faster, cheaper to build and requires a quarter of the workforce needed for traditional building method.
• they are secure, better built and a far safer environment for workers of all trades.
• reduce costs, overheads, equipment rental fees, manpower and union costs for developers.
• affordable to buy in the sense that it brings newly printed property values down by a quarter. For example we will now have a situation whereby a newly printed three bedroom or four bedroom apt in Midtown, near Central Park or in UES will now be up for less than $200k.
• use this to grant more licenses to new developers in all counties and boost the rate of specialists transitioning to self employment in the building trade.

Will NYC property market bubble burst with this? Certainly no. I am only offering options to a new generation of New Yorkers and a lot of people at the low income grade. Traditional buildings and traditional real estate market will still exist for those very few who can afford them.

One thing guaranteed though, if people have enough left after paying rent, they will certainly have more than enough at hand to enjoy the arts, start patronizing cultural arts and start collecting art and literary works. They will have enough at hand to plan for retirement and map out a promising future for their kids.

Fixing rent and affordable housing is one of my future ready plan for New York city. I will create a safe, livable, sustainable and affordable city for all. And the arts, with technology and affordable dwellings designed to suit a work/live profile, will bring more into the city than they’ve just did during the pandemic. That is why I set up ReBuildNewYorkCity.

Good thing is, this could be done and perfectly executed in all boroughs without a grant from the federal government or a loan from the state in Albany.

Please feel free to help share this message to artists, artistes and New Yorkers alike.