Why we should subsidise hipster novelists' housing
...There is an economic rationalist argument against subsiding housing for artists. After all, these people have made a choice to be in a low-paying high-risk (in terms of success) industry. Why should people who have to clean hospital wards subsidise the housing of some hipster novelist? But without writers living in the city, we also risk missing out on that city’s stories being captured on the page. Who hasn’t read a contemporary novel set in Melbourne or Sydney (not that there are many of them) and thrilled with recognition at the places re-imagined, dense with other people’s interior lives? It’s how empathy develops....