After years on the move due to escalating real-estate costs, Red Gate Arts Society has received a one-time reprieve under a new City initiative.

This week, the city voted to grant it $27,000 in critical one-time funding under a new initiative to save affordable artists' space in a real-estate climate where it's disappearing rapidly.

Red Gate has been at 1965 Main Street (the former home of VIVO Media Arts and Vancouver Art and Leisure) for 18 months on a triple-net lease, which means it has to cover property-tax hikes. It secured the lease until July 31 2023, with two renewal terms of five years each. Red Gate’s taxes have increased $18,000 since last year, pushing them beyond their financial capacity to operate the space.

Red Gate operates affordable artist production studios, a gallery, and a performance and gathering space for the local indie arts and music sector. About 70 to 80 artists share the site.

The society's long history of being displaced illustrates the crisis happening in the city's affordable arts spaces. Founded in 2012 after 28 years of operation as a for-profit organization in facilities on Powell and Hastings streets, the organization ended up closing its doors at 152 West Hastings in 2011 due to rising rent. In 2012, the group moved into an industrial building at 855 East Hastings, with dreams of creating a permanent home, working with the city to launch an Arts Events License program and hosting a series of workshops for the community. But after five years Red Gate was once again priced out of their venue with a steep rent increase.

What happens after this year's reprieve? A city staff report said, "At that time it is hoped policy changes to the tax system will be moving forward allowing Red Gate to run more sustainable operations in the future." Amid the plans,  Cultural Services staff are to launch a new Affordable Cultural Spaces Grants to support nonprofit space operators that provide subsidized, affordable space for professional artists and cultural groups. In addition, the provincial government has announced that it is working on legislation for interim property tax relief--a move that would allow municipalities to grant exemptions to certain commercial properties.

In B.C., properties are assessed at “highest and best use” by BC Assessment, and taxes are allocated based on those values--many of which are inflated due to the rising commercial and residential real-estate market here.

As Red Gate laments in the open letter to the city on its website, "Because of the nearby office and condo towers under construction, we are taxed on the “potential” developed value, which has more than quadrupled in just 4 years (assessed at 2.5 million in 2015, 11.2 million in 2019), so even though we are a non-profit cultural organization in an old low-rise building, we are being taxed at the same rate as the adjacent for-profit corporate megaliths."

The city estimates that, over the past year, more than 21 studios in industrial spaces with about 400 artists have either been closed or are under threat of displacement due to dramatic property tax and rent increases, competition with higher-value land uses, and development pressure. Staff cited spaces such as Merge Studios, Duplex, Dynamo, Index, White Monkey, Creative Coworkers, and Toast Collective as having closed or under threat.

The Straight reported late last year that an Eastside Culture Crawl study found that 400,000 square feet of artist studio spaces in its catchment were lost due to conversions and redevelopment over the past decade.

 In an online petition, Red Gate has been urging the City of Vancouver and the Province of BC to tax undeveloped property on existing use, not potential, speculative use. And that nonprofit cultural organizations should be exempt from property tax entirely, like churches and sports stadiums,

The $27,000 given to Red Gate has been drawn from the new Culture|Shift funds' Affordable Spaces Grant, recommended as part of the city's larger Making Space for Arts and Culture report, its longterm cultural strategy.