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The Beginning of Coliving

I moved to Los Angeles in 2009 with a pilot and a dream. The summer after graduating from Willamette University in Salem, OR, I wrote and directed what I hoped would be the next great American television show, a dark comedy called, “Nick Bradley Might be an Alcoholic.” It followed a young man (my age) who got a DUI and was sentenced to 3,000 hours of community service the same week that he was forced to take over his father’s company. Hilarity ensued…

I didn’t have the money to direct a TV show, and TV shows are expensive to produce… especially when you write sports-cars, mansions, and police-chases into the script (which I did). I couldn’t ask my parents… or rather I could, but they simply didn’t have any money (my mother was a receptionist and my father a journeyman carpenter).

So I did the next best thing! I stole my old high school’s parent email list, and asked every single parent in the entire school to invest in my TV pilot. For the low, low price of $39,000 dollars, an investor would receive an Executive Producer credit, and when I inevitably sold the show to HBO, I would pay them a 7x return on their money. (I thought a 7x return sounded “well thought out”, whereas a 10x return would seem like I was just pulling numbers of the air (which I was)).

After a week of no responses (I sent this to three hundred people, so I only needed a .03% response rate to fund my pilot), I excitedly opened my email account to find a reply. It was from a stern gentlemen informing me that it’s illegal to spam people offering “investment opportunities”, and that I’d inadvertently just made a “public offering”, which are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That was my first unsuccessful attempt to raise capital.

Although terrified that a SWAT team would break down my door any minute, I didn’t let the fact that I had no money get in the way of my dream… I set shooting dates. I held casting casting calls… I built props… I assembled a motley film-crew of misfits that donated their time and equipment… And I asked random strangers for favors.

Within months of moving to LA I got signed by a hotshot manager (Dan Farah), repped by a top talent agency (ICM), and partnered with Stuber Productions at Universal Studios. The gates to the kingdom were opening as I got to spend my days pitching television networks like NBC, Comedy Central and Spike.

Based off of Nick Bradley Might be an Alcoholic I got funding for my next two projects (without breaking SEC regulations this time), hired to direct a commercial, and a contract to write a script.

Simultaneously, the producer of my next pilot was negotiating with Chris Kattan (from SNL) to star in my new show. I was beside myself with excitement. I had the funding, I had the opportunity, and now I had a known star that could catapult my career. This was a long way from holding casting calls at community theaters in Portland and begging strangers to work for free.

But as my career was reaching a crescendo, the money I’d made from the commercial and script dwindled to nothing. Although I was frugal (I showed up to meetings at NBC on a bicycle, I was an extended-stay dog-sitter to avoid paying rent, and I stayed in every night because I couldn’t afford to go out for drinks…) I hadn’t taken a salary from the new pilot in order to stretch the production budget, and I suddenly found myself completely broke…

Not… “I-guess-I’ll-cancel-my-netflix-subscription-broke”…. There was exactly $11 dollars in my bank account and there were no checks in the mail… I simply had nothing.

To make matters worse, I was fired from my dog-sitting gig after the dogs escaped from an unlatched door and got hit by a car (don’t worry… the dogs were fine… I was not). I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have a place to live, and studio apartments in Los Angeles cost $1,500 dollars.

Despite being in the thick of production and casting a new show, I found a no-salary/commission-only job for a landlord leasing out their vacant units, and so I frantically rode my bicycle all over the city using my pitching skills to sell the hell out of every vacant apartment in Hollywood.

As it turned out, I was good at it. A property owner would give me a $2,000 dollar one-bedroom apartment, and I would bring back a lease signed for $2,400 and collect my commission.

Over the coming months, my financial situation turned around, but it came at the cost of pursuing my creative career… My pilot slowly fell apart… I was working so many hours at my “day-job” that I was unavailable for production meetings, and I was turning in script rewrites late or not-at-all. The job was sucking the creativity out of me.

The financier finally pulled-out of the pilot because “…I didn’t seem committed enough to the project…” and I never even got to meet Chris Kattan.

****************************

I was at a bar three years later (I could afford to go out for drinks now), and someone asked, “What do you do?”

Without skipping a beat, I said, “I write and direct.”

But when they followed up… “What are you working on?”

I stammered and my heart sank.

The honest answer was, “I’m in real estate now.”

I hadn’t put ink on paper in nearly two years…

How long can you call yourself an artist without creating any art?

I never chose to stop writing and directing, life just got more expensive and complicated… I had a girlfriend now, Sarah, and we liked to go out to eat. I had a nice apartment and I traded my bicycle for a car.

I thought I could fill the void that came from abandoning my passion by making more money, but the more money I made the more depressed and isolated I felt.

Every single day I would tell ambitious young “kids” from Michigan, North Dakota, and Delaware that they wouldn’t be able to move to LA to pursue their dreams because they had…

“Unestablished Credit,” “Insufficient Income,” and “Inadequate Savings” …that they would have to work seventy-five hours per week in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment in this city.

The most insidious thing about the “housing crisis” was that young people were being forced to survive, and never given the opportunity to thrive.

And I was part of the problem… My job was to raise rents for landlords… making the city even less affordable, and forcing young-creatives to abandon their dreams just like I had.

I couldn’t bring myself to see the irony in the situation until writing this today.

*************************

I hated real estate… it was the least innovative industry in the world. The landlord/tenant relationship had gone unchanged for hundreds of years…

The lord-of-the-land collects his rent and gives you a lonely box to live in.

But why do people have to pay so much for things they only use a fraction of the time?

Especially when it comes at the cost of abandoning their dreams?

What’s the point of paying for a kitchen when you rarely cook? What’s the point of paying for a bathroom that sits empty 99% of the time? What’s the point of paying for a living room when it’s not filled with friends?

I had a place to live…

But I wanted a life.

I wanted experiences.

I wanted inspiration.

I wanted adventures.

I wanted meaningful human connection…

We evolved living together in close-knit communities… and our great-ape cousins still do. We slept in caves together, cooked around the fire together, raised our children together, hunted and gathered our food together…

But as we traded forests for cities, we opted for privacy rather than community… and lost of our sense of human connection.

We’re the most-connected, yet somehow the most-lonely generation in the history of the world.

48% of young people say they feel lonely.

37% have sought mental health treatment.

¼ young people say they have zero close friends.

⅕ haven’t had a meaningful interaction in the past week.

I felt this, and I wanted to change it…

Most of my creative friends had left the city because they couldn’t afford it anymore. The remaining were finding creative solutions to live like paying $600 per month to sleep on an army cot under their roommates clothes in the closet of a cockroach infested studio apartment…

I wanted to create a home where young, talented, ambitious people could live together, work together, and collaborate together… Where they would have the resources, network and community that would empower them to pursue their dreams… and never have to worry about abandoning them because it was too expensive to afford a good life.

I wanted to provide a life,

Not just a place to live.

**************************

UP(st)ART was going to be a place where (UP)wardly mobile creatives could (st)ART their (ART)istic careers.

We couldn’t afford any help, and so I spent the summer covered in sweat and dirt building our first location, UP(st)ART: Hoover House. I assembled every bunk-bed and piece of furniture, cut holes through concrete, and crawled through thick “mud” under the house trying to find the source of a persistent sewer leak.

Once we maxed out all the credit cards, Sarah and I just started filling Hoover with all of our personal belongings. My piano. Our couch. My microphones. The computer that I edited Nick Bradley Might be an Alcoholic on. And then we built a recording booth into the closet so people could record their music onsite.

On August 1st, 2016, the twenty-nine of the most talented and ambitious “cool-broke-kids” in Los Angeles moved into Hoover House to become the very first “UP(st)ARTers”. They were a dynamic group of artists, actors, models, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, DJ’s, writers, and creatives… and seeing them connect was humbling.

The experiment was working… I’d had over one hundred applications, and never once asked anyone for a, “credit score, income statement, or savings account balance.” Rather, I asked, “What are your three, six and twelve month career goals?”, “What would success in your field mean to you?”, and “What do you have to contribute to the community?”

Instead of requiring pay-stubs and bank statements, I required applicants submit their music, portfolio, designs, manuscript, reel, film, ideas or dreams… And we were charging $695 per month, less than half the price of a studio apartment.

Next I asked my 23-year-old cousin Lorenzo to drop out of college and join Sarah and I in building the next UP(st)ART locations… and again… it took a surprisingly little amount of convincing (I have a “way” with people).

*********************

But more important than the programming… the adventures… the creative spaces…

UP(st)ART is a community.

It’s a family unto itself, with out own nomenclature, culture, slang, inside jokes and identity.

It’s a place to fit-in and belong.

A place to inspire and be inspired.

A place to fall in love… then out of love, and back in-love again.

A place to find your tribe for the rest of your life.

A place to share your successes and failures.

A place to experience the best and worst moments of life together.

I started UP(st)ART because LA was a big, scary, impersonal and expensive city that lacked the empathy and compassion that I longed for. But as I grow and travel, I realize that it’s not just Los Angeles… it’s the whole world.

We as humans long for purpose and meaning, and it is a long, soul-crushing life when you’re not passionate about what you do.

It is really, really difficult to chase your dreams when you’re a young person today. UP(st)ART is going to change that.

We’re going to empower young people to move to any city in the entire world with only $1,000 in their pocket.

Whether it’s Munich, New York, Shanghai or Paris… We’re going to turn geographic and social mobility into a human right.

No matter the city or passion, we’re going to build communities that will support you, and facilities, amenities and resources that will empower you to achieve your dreams..

…So people everywhere can minimize the hours worked in order to simply survive, and focus their time on building lives that allow them to thrive.

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