The 152-unit residential building is located in Hollywood at 1630 Schrader Blvd. (photo courtesy of Thomas Safran and Associates)

Los Angeles has long been a mecca for artists. Aspiring musicians, actors and writers move to the city every year with dreams of one day making it big. But for some, the high cost of living makes it almost impossible to survive off the limited income from artistic work. With the COVID-19 pandemic and recent SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes halting film and television productions, many in the entertainment industry have been out of work for months or years.

“We know that in the main entertainment hubs in the country – New York and Los Angeles in particular – it’s very difficult for working artists in all these disciplines to live affordably, but also to live in proximity to where they work,” Keith McNutt said.

McNutt is the director of the western region of the The Entertainment Community Fund, a national nonprofit formerly known as The Actors Fund that supports workers across different roles in the entertainment industry.

“The mission is really twofold. Half of what we do is acting as a safety net for people in times of need or crisis, and the other half is helping people build more sustainable lives in the arts over the long term,” McNutt said.

On Wednesday, May 29, the Entertainment Community Fund, in partnership with developer Thomas Safran & Associates, officially launched a new residential building in Hollywood that provides affordable housing exclusively for low-income artists. The 152-unit building is located on a former parking lot at 1630 Schrader Blvd. and is known as the Cicely Tyson Residential Building. The unit prices range from $600-$2,400 per month, and the building has community spaces such as shared lounges, a gym, courtyards and a commercial space that will house the future headquarters of the Entertainment Community Fund’s West Coast headquarters.

The residential building is half of a two-structure project called the Hollywood Arts Collective. An adjacent building known as the Rita Moreno Arts Building is currently under construction.

“When it’s done, it’s going to have a black box theater, which was initiated because of a large donation made by [philanthropist] Glorya Kaufman. It will also have a little over 3,000 square feet of art gallery space for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions,” said Courtney DeBeikes, senior project manager at Thomas Safran & Associates.

The Rita Moreno Arts Building is expected to open to the public in fall 2025, according to DeBeikes.

According to McNutt, the project has been in the works since 2006, when the Entertainment Community Fund first approached the city about the need for more affordable housing. After partnering with Thomas Safran & Associates, the nonprofit finally received approval to create affordable housing at the site in Hollywood in 2016. After receiving the lease, the groups applied for financing through federal affordable housing grants. The residential building cost approximately $90 million to build.

“Those tax credit allocations are more than half of the cost of construction. We got a grant from the state, a grant from the city and took out some conventional financing and that’s where the funding comes [from] to make it affordable,” McNutt said.

The Hollywood Arts Collective is located on city-owned land that it leases for $1 each year. The affordable housing project will move the city closer to its goal of creating over 450,000 housing units by 2029, as planned in its 2021-29 housing element.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the building was held on Wednesday, May 29, although residents began moving in in August 2023.

“We generally like to wait a couple of months to let residents get settled and address any construction issues … before we invite so many people and city officials,” DeBeikes said.

All of the units in the building have been filled, and the waitlist to apply for a lease is now approximately 3,000 names long, DeBeikes said. The building is currently only accepting applications for mobility accessible units.

Though the building is full, DeBeikes and McNutt said that plans for similar artist-focused affordable housing projects are in the works.

McNutt said that in addition to Kaufman’s donation for the arts building, she also gifted the nonprofit funding for future projects.

“She was so happy with how this is all turning out that she said, ‘you know what, I want you to be able to do more.’ So she gave us this transformational gift a year and a half ago to build five more of these projects in L.A. County, all affordable housing for artists, over the next 10 years,” McNutt said.

In the meantime, McNutt encouraged local artists and entertainment professionals who are interested in similar opportunities to create an account with Entertainment Community Fund’s online portal.

“You can look through all of the educational and support services that we have available to the community here. Four times a year, we have affordable housing workshops on how to locate other kinds of affordable housing in the neighborhood,” McNutt said.

For information, visit entertainmentcommunity.org/services-and-programs/find-housing.