By Colin Teague and David LaFontaine of Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative
Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative: Equitable Community Living for Artists
Part four of a five-week series on cooperative values
This week we spoke to David LaFontaine, a founding member of Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative:
Tell us about Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative:
David: Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative was created under a program by the Philadelphia Historic Preservation Corporation, now a part of Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, with funding from Pew Charitable Trust. The cooperative was formed to organize artists to move into old industrial buildings. We bought our current building in 1991 from Urban Outfitters. The building is located in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood and was originally an electronics factory. We renovated the building to include 15 units – to live there, you must be an artist or family member of an artist, meet financial requirements, and be approved by other members.
What is Greene Street’s mission and model?
Our mission is to provide affordable housing for artists and their families, and for that housing to be controlled by artists. We also work hard to keep our building in good shape. We’re not a limited equity cooperative so units trade on the market to anyone who is approved for membership, which makes it difficult to keep housing costs low.
Tell us about the community at Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative. How do you exhibit cooperative values?
We currently have 15 member households. We’re totally self-managed – all our members are fully participatory in the management and operations of our building and grounds. To manage our cooperative, we have different committees. It is mandatory for all of our members to serve on at least one committee, and all members are welcome to join any committee meeting.
Before a prospective member can be admitted, they must meet and receive approval from all members. We plan events to make friends between members, and our members are active in the surrounding community.
How does the cooperative practice equity among its members?
Firstly, when it comes to making decisions about our cooperative, each member household gets one vote. Everyone is invited to be on the board, and as I mentioned before, everyone has to be on at least one committee. Our committees include maintenance, finance, membership, policy, and community relations.
Because of this structure, everyone is involved, and every major project must be discussed thoroughly, to make sure everyone’s voice has been heard before making decisions.
We treat all of our members fairly and we’ve never evicted anyone in our history. It can be difficult when members are experiencing financial issues, but we always try to work with them.
How does GSAC interact with the surrounding community?
Every year, our members participate in Philadelphia Open Studio Tours – during two weekends in October, Philadelphians are welcomed into our members’ units to view and learn about their art. We’ve also had members invite community members into their homes to talk about their art on a more impromptu basis.
We’ve been here for 30 years, so there are a lot of personal relationships between our members and folks in the surrounding community. For example, many of our members work in tandem with community members to help maintain our local park, Howell Park, and most of our members are also members of Weaver’s Way Food Co-op.
Does GSAC value sustainability? If so, what sustainability initiatives are taking place?
Yes, we do. Sustainability is not expressly written into our mission, but we do what we can. We mulch and compost in the back garden and we replaced our lighting with movement activated LED lights. We also have two environmental projects going on right now: We are currently installing a stormwater management system that collects stormwater runoff, and we’re working on installing solar panels.
If you’d like to learn more about Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative, you can visit members’ home studios as part of Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST). For two weekends every October, nearly 300 Philadelphia artists open their studios to the public, to share their work and talk about their artistic processes. Visitors can explore many art forms, including painting, photography, ceramics, woodworking, and sculpture. While Greene Street Artist’s Cooperative’s 2024 tours have passed, many Philadelphia studios are open for tours this weekend (10/26 & 10/27). Check the directory to find one that interests you!