Column Council: Montreal should do more to protect artists’ studios

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Montreal’s creative class is under pressure from the real estate market, as the current crisis drives artists out of the central districts. If Montreal wants to preserve its artistic core, it needs to protect studio spaces, and fast.

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The relationship between artists and big cities is complicated. Alternately courted and expelled, artists are both harbingers of gentrification and one of its first victims. The cycle is a familiar one: artists move their working studios to an affordable area and help make it attractive only for developers to move them to put their space to more profitable use.

The red hot real estate market is only accelerating this trend. It makes it harder for artists to afford professional space and more tempting for developers to repurpose former industrial buildings used as studios as condos.

Until now, Montreal’s approach to curbing this phenomenon has been to fund the development of “protected studios.” In 2021, Quebec and Montreal invested $30 million to help nonprofits reach agreements with building owners on long-term leases below market value.

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This program has created affordable and durable spaces, comprising about half of Montreal’s studios. Half, then, are not protected. And even for those that are, the current policy’s ability to protect studio affordability is limited, because the program allocates funds to offset tax increases for just two years, on 20- or 30-year leases.

A property tax exemption for artists’ studios would help a lot. First, it would encourage more developers to participate in the existing program. In the past, building owners were often lured into the program through zoning exemptions. However, these are not always possible for the municipal authorities or necessary for the owners.

A property tax exemption would also better protect “sheltered studio” tenants from rent increases that landlords would otherwise pass on.

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Montreal artists benefit from living in a city that is relatively affordable but is catching up.

Some studio buildings in the near future could well end up like the one I shared with about 80 fellow artists until recently. The developers bought it in 2018 and it wasn’t long before rent increases and reuse were planned. By 2020, we were all gone, scattered in and out of Montreal.

When communities, sometimes decades old, are forced to disperse, it has a negative impact on the entire creative ecosystem. Artists will seek affordability outside of Montreal, in outlying districts or in smaller spaces, sometimes using their own home. (Of course, artists may also find it more difficult to live in the city since they, along with other low-income people, are being priced out of central areas.) Artists’ practices are limited by smaller settings; this may force some to reduce the scope of their work.

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In 2016, the median income for visual artists was $13,497. In recent years, different levels of government have addressed the precariousness of cultural workers, in particular with investments and a reform of the Quebec Artist’s Status Act. The new law standardizes working conditions, although it does little to increase the income of professional artists.

But this is not just about the artists and their needs.

Montreal’s brand as a cultural metropolis is well established. It boosts tourism, attracts newcomers and generates billions. More than a brand, it has come to define an identity. The bustling creativity of Montreal’s streets is part of what makes the city attractive and a reflection of modern Quebec.

But Montreal can’t take artists for granted, especially since the cost of living here is catching up with other big cities.

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Studios are community hubs and creative sanctuaries and as such are essential to the lives of artists. Montreal takes pride in its work, but can still do more to make it possible.

Renaud Chicoine-McKenzie is a journalism student at the Université de Montréal. This column is the result of a collaborative discussion with other current or recent journalism students participating in this four-week series from the Montreal Gazette Column Council. They are Sepideh Afshar, sophie dufresneMonique Kasonga, Dima Kiwan and Gabriela Vasquez-Rondon.