As Zohran Mamdani prepares to take the reins at City Hall, no promise rings more loudly than his analysis of how affordability threatens to sap the vitality that has defined New York through its history, especially for young people who continue to renew it in its unparalleled creative sector. The crisis is not only economic, but spiritual as well.
New York is not just a skyline or a street grid — it’s a shared stage where artists, teachers, mental health counselors, designers, nonprofit leaders, and youth mentors all contribute to the civic life of the five boroughs.
But today, too many of those contributors are being priced out of the very city they sustain. According to a 2023 analysis from the Center for an Urban Future and the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, nearly 60% of small and mid-sized city arts organizations operate with less than three months of cash reserves, and 43% face potential displacement due to rising real estate costs. Since 2020, more than 200 cultural spaces have shuttered permanently.
The comptroller’s 2024 “Spotlight: New York City’s Creative Economy” report found the creative industries provide 234,000 jobs, or 6% of all jobs in the city, and 8% of wage and salary earnings, which does not include ancillary services and jobs that serve the industry.
But when artists lose studios, nonprofits can’t afford stable leases, and community groups are forced to operate out of makeshift corners, the city loses its capacity to deliver public good at every level — from education and workforce training to health, cultural equity, and neighborhood belonging.
What’s needed now isn’t nostalgia, but a new model that meets this moment of economic contraction and civic uncertainty with imagination — and shared purpose.
That’s what the resurrection of the Lower East Side’s P.S. 64 seeks to offer. Nothing else like it exists in New York City.
The civic and cultural project now taking shape inside the long-vacant P.S. 64 will bring together mission-driven organizations, cultural workers, educators, health equity groups, and youth-serving programs under one roof to weave them into a vibrant, self-sustaining ecosystem with shared values and shared infrastructure.
The idea is to give nonprofits what they need most — stable, subsidized space — and they’ll do what they do best – deliver impact. Reduce overhead. Enable collaboration. Create economic breathing room for creativity and community care. In a moment when public budgets are shrinking and federal support is uncertain, this model isn’t a luxury — it’s infrastructure.
In other sectors, co-working changed how entrepreneurs and startups build businesses. Innovation hubs accelerated tech ecosystems. Yet nonprofit and cultural organizations still operate like it’s 1995, struggling with scarce resources and rising costs.
With more than 100,000 square feet of programmable space, the new center will offer rehearsal and performance rooms, classrooms, wellness spaces, digital media labs, youth programming hubs, affordable offices for small nonprofits, and space for New Yorkers to simply gather and be in community with one another.
Imagine a place where a mental health organization hosts community care workshops down the hall from a free youth film lab. Where a teaching artist can rent rehearsal space at below-market rates and collaborate with neighbors who once lived worlds apart. Where a city agency can partner with a local nonprofit not just by contract, but by proximity.
It’s also a way to repair a long-standing civic breach. P.S. 64 was once home to CHARAS/El Bohio, a Puerto Rican-led cultural organization that kept the building alive through decades of disinvestment before it was stripped from community use and left to languish. The area lost one of its few public bastions of cultural and civic imagination. Restoring that promise is not just good policy. It’s an act of justice.
Neighborhoods from the Bronx to Brooklyn face the same squeeze: rich in ideas, poor in space. P.S. 64’s model can be replicated citywide — but only if the first one succeeds. For funders, it presents an opportunity to support not just individual organizations, but an entire ecosystem that multiplies impact across sectors.
The math is compelling: shared facilities reduce operational costs by 30-40%, while proximity creates programming synergies. Long-term stability allows organizations to focus on mission rather than rent negotiations.
The comptroller’s report said the city “should treat the sector as the economic engine and resource that it is.”
We agree. A rescued, and resurrected, P.S. 64 provides just such an opportunity and replicable model to solidify what the report calls that “fragile cultural ecosystem” for decades to come.
Francis is the founder of Q Impact Solutions, which is leading efforts to redevelop P.S. 64 on the Lower East Side.
