When James De La Vega started painting East Harlem’s walls eight years ago, he was heralded as part of a new generation of Puerto Rican artists who would breathe life into the neighborhood’s artistic tradition. Today, he says he is a victim of the transformation he helped bring to the neighborhood.

Earlier this month his shop at 1651 Lexington Ave. posted a “going out of business” sign. Still, unwilling to go without a fight, supporters of Mr. De La Vega, a recent write-in candidate for the state Senate and well-known local figure, sent out a press release saying he had been “pushed out of Spanish Harlem” by skyrocketing commercial interests.

“I’m all for people getting cheaper deals on rents,” Mr. De La Vega said, during a one-day stopover between trips to Puerto Rico and Mexico last week, “but not at the expense of ruining cultures.”

With tentative plans to rent out the space next to his 500-square-foot office to a Papaya King, his nonprofit landlord is selling out to the “money game,” he said, and the hot dog restaurant would “just bring negativity to the neighborhood.”

To hear his landlord tell it, however, it was necessary to increase the rents on commercial properties to continue their mission of providing low-income tenants affordable housing. Mr. De La Vega’s spot, for which he paid $575 plus one painting a month, was particularly valuable.

“The solution is not to bankrupt our own organization by making unjustifiable subsidies but to develop programs and campaigns that can address the crises of displacement,” said William Jacoby, the executive director of Hope Community, a community development corporation with a mission to develop and manage affordable housing. Mr. Jacoby said the corporation offered Mr. De La Vega another site further uptown, which he rejected.

A fixture in the neighborhood, Mr. De La Vega’s combination of graffiti art and poetry is all over East Harlem. The work tends to the political and is often in flux. After Pope John Paul II died, the metal gate on his store had a picture of Jesus on the cross. This week, it was a picture of Fernando Ferrer, and written in English, “Fernando Ferrer for mayor – a mayor that really speaks Spanish.”

On the corner of 116th Street and Lexington Avenue is a plaque dedicated in 1999, when relations between Mr. De La Vega and his landlord were better. To the left is a mural of a blindfolded man with “72 Hours to Live. The War affects us all!” scribbled. Be low it is a plaque with a list of locations to see his work and “Hope Community Inc. Rebuilding neighborhoods one block at a time.”

Whether or not Mr. De La Vega’s art directly contributed to the neighborhood’s change, there is no question today’s East Harlem is cleaner, safer, and more expensive than even six years ago. For the most part this is a positive shift, said a neighborhood resident, Ramon Salas, 48, who recalls when he arrived 16 years ago and would not wear a necklace for fear it would be stolen. Five hung around his neck Monday. Still, he said, he does not like to see higher rents force many Puerto Ricans like him to move out.

“It’s a reality that we are improving our quality of life,” the owner of La Fonda Boricua, Roberto Ayala, said yesterday. While the general environment has progressed even in the five years since he moved from Puerto Rico, he said that some people who labored to build the community cannot enjoy it. “It’s very sad, because they’re icons of the neighborhood. Suddenly they can’t afford to live in the place that they worked so hard to build.”

For Mr. De La Vega, whose paintings he said sell mostly out of state, the reason to stay is mostly emotional, not financial. “Most of my relation with the neighborhood is very much about giving away,” he said.

Still, the organization’s director dismissed any notion that the Hope Community should continue to make special exceptions for him.” It appears he thinks he is the only artist in the community,” Mr. Jacoby said. “We’re interested in supporting art in many ways, and renting a commercial space has to respond to market forces and market needs.”