At the time, Ms. Orlick was renting a studio with a shared bathroom in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and paying even less, but her room was too small to work in and she was eager to live in an artistic community. She was also excited about using the building’s shared basement space, where she has shot and shown her films.

Ms. Orlick set up a work space in her room as well, but because of the conditions required for film production and development, she uses it more for creative side projects. There is a table where she makes zines and hats — her latest obsession — that hang on her walls, alongside vintage hats, drawings, watercolors and a puppet she made at a puppetry class in the Czech Republic.

“It has been really nice to be immersed in the community and to experiment with my art,” she said. And the relatively affordable rent has allowed her to keep her bakery shifts — she works as a pastry chef in Greenpoint, Brooklyn — to four days a week, which gives her three days a week for her art. Most of her artist friends outside the building, she said, pay closer to $1,000 a month.

It can also be a lot of fun: “Hopping around from room to room, running into friends on every corner, having tea, impromptu dinners, writing poetry, barbecues in the spring and summer, yelling at friends in the backyard from the second floor, climbing down the ladder to hang out.”

But living, collaborating and hanging out with the same people so much of the time can be challenging. Especially because, to offset rent increases over the years, all the apartments in the building have taken on additional tenants, converting living rooms and large closets into bedrooms.

Ms. Orlick’s apartment, for example, is a four-bedroom that houses six people, with one in the living room and another who pays $400 to live in a closet with a loft bed. A kitchen is the apartment’s only communal gathering space. The close quarters combined with close friendships and artistic relationships can be trying.