Property Trust Stabilizes Arts Organizations in a Difficult Real Estate Environment

In San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, former porn theater The Dollhouse is no more, but it will soon be repurposed thanks to the Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST). The building will soon become home to CounterPulse, a performance arts nonprofit that promotes risk-taking as a central part of its mission…Shelley Trott, the director of arts strategy and ventures at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation in San Francisco, sits on the board of CAST and was instrumental in getting the Trust off the ground.

She came to realize, she says, that rent subsidies do not stabilize arts organizations; what they need is control over their spaces. So CAST tries to pair up well-run arts groups having lease issues with landlords who want to sell. CAST then buys the properties, renting it to the arts group for seven to 10 years while they raise the money needed to buy the building at the price that was originally paid.