Buried in the Metro section, yesterday's Times finally noticed something odd: Apparently it's kind of hard to afford to live in New York these days if you're not a hedge-fund manager, and so the city is starting to lose some of its vaunted "creative class." We were busy trying to figure out under what definition this was news when we noticed an interesting — and newsworthy, even — fact near the end of the article:

The city's Department of Cultural Affairs, aware of the potential for brain drain in the arts, is working to create new housing and financing packages for people in the arts.... The city is also pursuing an arrangement to allow artists to invest in buildings with philanthropists putting up half of the money, with the agreement that they would get half the profits in a sale, a program without real precedent in New York.

This sounds like a fabulous idea, not only because maybe artists can actually afford real estate here with philanthropies putting up half the money, but also because what co-op board would say no with the Ford Foundation as your co-signer?

But we also see it raising a problem. Who exactly gets to count as an artist?

Which is to say: Bloggers do, right?

New York, Once a Lure, Is Slowly Losing the Creative Set [NYT]