Affix Arts Community started as a promise from one sister to another.
Affix Arts Community exists because Affix founder, Jamie, made a promise to help her sister buy a home.
Jamie’s sister is a Denver musician with a familiar dream: to own a home in the community where she makes her art. But like so many working artists, she found that the traditional path to homeownership simply wasn’t built for her.
Though Jamie spent the first decade of her career working as an architect, she came to realize that better design couldn’t solve the problems facing first-time buyers. So she went back to school for an MBA with a focus in real estate, and began studying the systems behind housing development. She researched zoning codes across the nation, and spoke with hundreds of aspiring homeowners, realtors, builders, investors, lenders, city officials, and developers, trying to understand a deceptively simple question: why did we stop building attainable homes?
The search for a new solution led back to the core concept of what it means to live in community.
Jamie Saunders, cover of Business at Leeds Magazine,
& her muse, artist Bunny Blake
What if we built communities the way we used to?
Historically, homes weren’t built by investors and national development corporations; they were built by neighbors, for neighbors. The exchange wasn’t centered around investment. It was focused on community.
Today, our communities are not bound by geography; we are bound by our shared values. The Affix Arts Community will be a physical place, but it is powered by the broader collection of individuals around the world who share our values.
The members of the Affix Arts Community are bound by passion, beauty, exploration, and a desire to improve each other’s lives.
Although we can’t frame each other’s homes at scale, we can still help each other, and have fun doing it!
This isn’t an investor’s solution to community building. It’s an artist’s solution.
An overnight stay at the Affix Arts Community isn’t an investment, an ownership interest, a loan, a donation, a grant, or a financial stake in an artist’s home. This is a return to the traditional system of building community: reciprocity.
Early guest bookings at the guest suites help Affix pay for shared community development costs such as utilities, roads, and foundations, preparing more reasonably priced homesites within the community, for future homeowners.
As the community takes shape, its creative residents welcome their guests into the world they helped create. The artists share their homes, their craft, their process, and the experience of making things together in the Rocky Mountains.