Are artists victims of gentrification? Or the perpetrators of it?

Artists move into empty post-industrial spaces and poor neighborhoods, save on rent, create their work, build up studios and communities — and then find they're priced out.  

Lisa Adams was evicted twice from L.A.'s downtown Arts District and is worried it's about to happen again. Thirty years ago the area was home to light manufacturing and warehouses. Now it's one of the city's most expensive places to live. "Artists are willing to put up with things that other populations won't," says Lisa, “You are a kind of forerunner to what is to come."

Artist Lisa Adams in her studio

(Saul Gonzalez)

In downtown L.A., The Wolff Company housing developer uses the cultural cachet of living an "artsy" lifestyle to rent two-bedroom loft apartments for $2,700 in a building called OLiVE DTLA. They advertise "commissioned street-art murals" as a building amenity and held a competition for a working artist to move in temporarily and give some street-cred to the property. "It's an authenticity and a personality that we have to kind of work to give the building," says the developer's marketing director.

Demographic change in Downtown L.A. since the 1970s

(Maps by Michael Bader)