SoHo’s artist colonization began informally because zoning forbade residence there

Evidence

As a candidate John Lindsay campaigned against LOMEX. Once elected, he thought he might slip through the plan as a trench. Thanks to community protests, the project—officially unveiled in March 1967—stalled again. Little Italy was saved. The Cast-Iron District or SoHo (the city planner acronym for South of Houston) would be preserved, if not for artists. Following the recommendations of a 1963 report that noted the area’s predominantly Black and Latino workforce, the City Planning Commission sought M-I zoning laws that restricted SoHo to light industry and forbade residence. Still, as businesses continued to decamp, landlords were eager to rent lofts (or unload their buildings), prudently concealing addresses when advertising in the Village Voice classifieds. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1011

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the shelf claim that artists-as-gentrification-advance-guard depends on illegal/loophole occupancy — the zoning prohibition is the exact enabling condition.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ style structural conditions argument — here the illegality of artists’ lofts is the material condition making low rent possible.