Preserving Affordability Summary

This March HDC partnered with Pratt Institute’s Historic Preservation Graduate Program to hold Preserving Affordability, a three-panel symposium on using historic preservation to develop and maintain affordable housing in New York City.

The three panels used a mix of case studies and “how to” presentations to highlight several overarching themes:

• The broad range of properties potentially eligible for listing on the National Register, and advantages (and limitations) of doing so.
• The substantial resources available through the federal and NY State historic tax credit programs to finance affordable housing in NYC
• The potential for preservation to be part of the recipe for converting overbuilt commercial historic structures, such as older office buildings, into affordable housing.

The first panel provided in depth case-studies of two sizeable affordable housing projects in NYC completed in the past several years that could not have proceeded without the properties being listed on the National Register and federal and state historic tax credit financing.  

 Christoph Stump, Vice President of Design & Construction for Trinity Financial, and Ward Dennis, Partner at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, discussed what it took to completely rehabilitate the A. Philip Randolph Houses, 36 five-story Old Law tenement buildings in Harlem owned by New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and listed on the National Register. Stump noted, “This is not just about buildings, but we also […] preserved the actual community in those buildings. We were very lucky to work together with the tenant association, and they helped us in developing the program, the apartments. And really, they were front and center with us all through the process.” 

Mark Zimet, Director of Development at Dunn Development Corp, shared the in-depth process on the rehabilitation and restoration of the T Building, an art deco, former tuberculosis hospital in Jamaica, Queens that was listed on the National Register as part of the project. The T Building now contains 200 units of low and moderate-income affordable housing, including 75 units for formerly homeless single adults, on-site [social] services, a youth opportunity hub with a commercial kitchen, and space in the basement for working artists who also teach programs for building residents.

Zimet stated, “This was our first experience with historic tax credits. The $18 million in equity from the federal and state historic credits provided about 16% of the overall funding. But it’s a big number, and without that, we would not have been able to proceed with this project, or it would have required a lot more public subsidy from affordable housing, which is always scarce and hard to access.”

An important thing to consider in conversion of existing historic buildings for affordable residential development, is that many times these buildings are overbuilt under existing zoning and conversion allows for more housing than would be possible with a new building. The T Building is a good example of this and under previous development plans it would have been demolished for a new building with substantially fewer units of housing. 

The second panel described the nuts and bolts of the financing process, including listing buildings on the National Register, and using Historic Tax Credit and Low Income Housing Tax Credit financing.   Lindsay Peterson, Associate at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, explained the four criteria for listing properties on the National Register and that only one of the four considers architectural significance.   Al Shehadi, Principal of Shehadi Advisory, included several examples of buildings that did not fit common notions of architectural beauty that were listed on the National Register and rehabilitated using historic tax credits.  Daniel Magidson, Vice President, Syndication, at Enterprise Community Investments, explained the syndication process and the sizeable additional equity funding available when low-income housing tax credits are paired with historic tax credits to finance affordable housing.

Shehadi stated, “Historic tax credits is the largest economic development program that nobody knows about…In the 45 years since this program started, there’s been close to 50,000 projects completed, $122 billion of economic investment, about 650,000 housing units created, and about 200,000 of those units are affordable. So those are big numbers.” He also noted, “New York State credit is quite valuable. If you are looking at properties in New York State, you are lucky to be in a state that has a quite flexible credit. It’s easy to pair with the federal credit.”

The final panel explored emerging trends in the field including climate change, commercial-to-residential conversions, and possible changes in policy to encourage more rehabilitation of historic structures for affordable housing. 

Mark Ginsberg, Principal at Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, reiterated the point about using overbuilt historic buildings, as well as the importance of saving the embodied carbon, by not demolishing and sending the building material to a landfill. Gita Nandan, co-founder of thread collective, backed up this idea further, stating, “Historic buildings have been literally built to exist without lots of energy usage so they are a great building stock to be working with.”   

The symposium was attended by more than 75 preservationists, architects, and elected officials.  It demonstrated there is a significant need for more programming that shows how historic preservation can be part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis in New York City and whichprovides detailed guidance on how to take advantage of historic preservation incentives such as the tax credit.

HDC thanks our extensive list of panelists who generously lent their expertise to the program.  Their bios can be found on the HDC website.

You can view the entire symposium for free on HDC’s YouTube channel

HDC plans to do more programming around this topic in 2023, including a tour of a rehabilitation project and additional case studies. Make sure you are on HDC’s mailing list to hear more!