Subsidized hipness: the staleness of post-American culture

Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air on a Colorado development that takes the wealth-redevelopment concept beyond any kind of the-downtrodden-need-it excuse:

. . . the idea that the good people of Colorado need to spend $50 million of their money to subsidize artist communities during hard times seems, shall we say, silly to the point of irritatingly irresponsible.

This idea of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s—brewer and current beer lover himself—was hatched in Minnesota by a non-profit group called Artspace and exported to Loveland in Colorado, where the group built “30 affordable live and work units for artists and their families.” It’s unclear how much of that project, which is revamping an old feed-and-grain warehouse, is being paid for by the people of Loveland, but they’ve already given the non-profit and developers about $6 million in tax credits. With $500 million in assets across a dozen states, it sounds like Artspace is a big developer with an acceptably socially conscious sounding message that vacuums up subsidies just like, you know, other big developers.

The statewide Colorado project Hickenlooper announced will be a public-private partnership with an “uncertain price tag” for taxpayers, according to AP reporting. Super. The housing projects, scattered across the state, will cost about $5 million each, require residents make no more than 60 percent of the median area income, and have no real definition of artist. Hence, the craft brewers and liquor distillers’ inclusion. What about artisan marijuana cultivators?

The housing, if it looks anything like the proposals for Loveland, will be modern and hip, and we will be incentivizing a bunch of people to keep their incomes low to live in it.

Hey, all you dreadlocked brewers, sculptors, poets, interpretive dance types: you lose your hipness cred when you take the hard-earned money of the squaresville taxpayer across the state.