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According to a recent Freelancer's Union report, the city's creative sectorcomprised of artists, photographers, designers, composers and writersis facing increasing economic uncertainty related to a lack of stable employment. Over 40 percent report making less than $35,000 last year, half have little to no personal savings, and over a third lack proper health insurance. Ninety percent cited "unstable income" as the major disadvantage of their chosen profession.

All these factors, the study suggests, means that the citys creative classincluding its emerging artistsmay leave New York in favor of cities with a "lower cost of living and developing creative centers.

Filmmaker and video artist Matt Sheridan Smith, who has been splitting his time between New York and Berlin for the last four years, is intimately familiar with the problem.

In terms of creative production, New York seems to be getting more and more untenable. I can make enough money to produce bigger works here, but then I don't have enough money left over to live, Smith says.

Many of the financial woes of New Yorks cultural sector boil down to the simple question of real estate: the lack of affordable apartments and artist studios, even in the cheap fringes of the city. And the role that real estate has played in New York Citys post-War cultural legacy is hard to overstate.

From the emergence of the Abstract Expressionist painters in the early post-War years, to the creative explosion in SoHo in the 1970s and the East Village in the 80s (Basquiat, Goldin, Haring, etc.) to the growth of the Brooklyn scene over the last decade: This creative fervor was made possible by the availability of spaceincluding cavernous loftsat manageable prices.

Artists, of course, have long served as a vanguard for the forces of gentrification: After they move into once-blighted neighborhoods, the appeal of living in an artsy area soon attracts a moneyed, edge-seeking classleading to higher prices and an exodus of artists.

Adding significantly to the space problem today, however, is that emerging artists are being priced out of neighborhoods sooner and sooner. It took more than a decade for SoHo to become an enclave of the rich, and a few years for Williamsburg, Brooklyn to become too pricey. But now, developers and brokers seem to be following artists mere months after they move into a previously "undiscovered" area. Lamentable in itself, this pattern is made worse by the fact that few of these developers, unlike artists, look to build sustainable communities.

It certainly doesnt help that some of the institutions meant to foster artistic development are adding to the space crunch. A devastating blow was dealt to emerging artists when PS 1 Contemporary Arts Center turned its sprawling space atop the Clock Tower building in Downtown Manhattanwhich had hosted a rotation of open studiosinto the headquarters of its online radio station, WPS1.

Many emerging artists will find a way to stay in the city whatever the financial struggle, but it seems inevitable that the type of work being created will itself be affected. Few emerging artists, cramped into small studios-cum-living rooms in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, can work on an ambitious scale (unless directly funded by a gallery) or with the same creative abandon that comes with having no rent worries.

The financial stakes for young artists living in New York, especially with MFA debt, is higher than its ever been, says artist Jason Tomme, himself an MFA from Yale, who lives in Brooklyn and shows with the Buia Gallery in Chelsea.

Tomme sees this fact directly affecting the art.

That reality causes two things: a greater necessity for delusions of grandeurthis all-or-nothing attitude, which is probably good for art. But the other side is it makes artists shit their pants, allowing more calculated, conservative and market-oriented elements to sneak into their practice, which is obviously bad for art, he adds.