Housing Consumption for Artists and Creative Workers in Illinois

The relationship between income and housing consumption is by its nature complex to parse out. Housing statistics focused on consumption of housing are produced for households as opposed to wage statistics, which focus on individual workers. In parsing out housing costs, we focus on those households which contain at least one artist or creative worker and compare these households to those which don’t contain any artists or creative workers.

Looking at overall housing costs, households with at least one working artist who either owned or rented paid on average $272 more per month in ownership costs and $353 more in rental costs when compared to households with no artists present (Table 4). Between 2019 and 2021, households with at least one working artist present, saw an average monthly rental cost increase of $93 when compared to $17 for households with no artists. Conversely, households with at least one working artist present who owned their house saw a decline in monthly ownership costs of $117 from 2019 to 2021, versus a decline of $64 for households with no working artists present.

Data Source: 2019 and 2021 1-Year ACS Public Use Microdata Samples

Part of the observed cost differences are likely due to the concentration of artists and creative workers in higher-cost Illinois housing markets including the Chicago area and Northeastern regions of the state. Those areas had the highest average housing costs for households with artists and creative workers present, with rates also surpassing those of households without artists present (Table 5).

To get a fuller picture of whether these increased costs represent more of a hardship for households with artists, we look at the share of household income spent on housing costs. Based upon federal standards, households paying more than 30 percent of their income towards housing costs are considered cost burdened. In 2021, 22:3% of artists and creative workers were cost burdened, 4.7 percentage points more than the share of non-artists (Table 6). Between 2019 and 2021, the share of artists who are cost burdened increased by 1.5 percentage points compared to the 0.7 percentage points for non-artists.

Data Source: 2019 and 2021 1-Year ACS Public Use Microdata Samples

Looking at the shares of household income spend on rent, on average renters spend a greater share of their income on housing, and this share has gone up between 2019 and 2021 (Table 7). For owners, the average share of income spent is highest in Chicago, the Eastern, and Northeast regions of the state. For renters, this share is highest in the northwest and southwest portions of the state.

Taken together information on housing costs and cost burden indicate that when compared to other households, full-time artists experience higher rates of cost burden throughout the state, with renter households spending larger shares of their income on rent when compared to owners. While these data do not allow us to parse out whether these cost factors are shaping decisions to own or rent or residential preferences for housing within certain regions of the state, they conform to the previously observed patterns of wage disparity and overall precarity for artists and creative workers.

Housing affordability remains a major concern for many households throughout the state of Illinois. The COVID-19 pandemic brought into stark relief the precarity faced by many households in the state, particularly in with regards to their housing. This brief provides evidence that when compared to other households, households with working artists and creative workers pay a higher cost for their housing and tend to also pay a higher share of their household income towards housing. Overall, households outside of Chicago and the Northeastern region of the state fair better with regards to cost burden, however, substantial disparities remain. Renter households overall face higher rates of cost burden, and the gaps between the average renter household with full-time artists or creative workers present and those without are substantial.

Cost burdens have eased slightly, likely in part due to the impact of emergency federal spending on pandemic-era relief as reflected in differences between 2019 and 2021. Although these reflect the most currently available PUMS data, housing market trends since 2021 suggest an increase in both owner and renter costs which are likely to disparately impacts artists and creative workers.

This brief focuses specifically on comparing differences in wages and the share of household income spent on housing to raise awareness of how housing affordability issues disparately impact artists and creative workers. While this brief only covers basic dimensions of these relationships, findings suggest the need for a deeper examination of how cost burden may be contributing to shifts in shares of the Illinois artist and creative population in certain fields and may also contribute to the rationale for prioritizing artists and creative workers for affordable housing throughout the state.

This brief was supported by the University of Illinois System’s Presidential Initiative: Expanding the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities. We wish to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this brief: professors Dr. Andrew Greenlee, Dr. Jennifer Novak-Leonard, and Dr. Magdalena Novoa and Arpita Banerjee, Research Assistant, in the College of Fine and Applied Arts’ Department of Urban and Regional Planning; Thank you to Natalie Fiol for her design work, and to Dr. Carolyn Randolph-Kato, Visiting Associate Director of the College of Fine and Applied Arts’ Arts Impact Initiative, for supporting this effort.

The Arts Impact Initiative (AII) fosters understanding of the roles of art and artists in community development and promoting social well-being to guide arts practice and policy. AII is a three-year pilot program supported by the Investment for Growth Program out of the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.