Announcements
Historic Preservation, Section 106 and Affordable Housing
By: Mary Ann Hawthorne, Environmental Review Historian
If you listen to, watch, or read the news today in almost any large metropolitan area in the United States, you will undoubtedly hear or see stories commenting on the decline in availability of and/or lack of affordable housing. While affordable housing shortages and crises in large cities and metropolitan areas are often in the headlines, the issue reaches into the suburbs and rural areas, alike. As noted in a 2002 report, Historic Preservation and Affordable Housing: The Missed Connection by prominent preservation economist Donovan Rypkema, the crisis in affordable housing impacts renters, homeowners, and prospective homeowners, affecting a wide cross-section of Americans.
The Environmental Review team at the Historic Preservation Division (HPD) reviews projects every year that are associated with various types of affordable housing in communities statewide ranging from new construction to rehabilitation or adaptive reuse of historic buildings. The Environmental Review team most often reviews these projects under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 due to federal agency involvement. Section 106, as it is commonly known, is the provision in NHPA that requires federal agencies to consider how the projects they undertake, permit, approve, license, or fund can affect historic properties, both above and below ground.
Many communities leverage U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs to provide affordable housing opportunities. In 2022 and 2023, the Environmental Review team reviewed over 100 new construction projects utilizing various HUD programs in Bibb, Catoosa, Fulton, Glynn, Houston, Jackson, Jefferson, Laurens, Muscogee, Newton, Sumter, Tattnall, and Walton Counties, among others. While constructing new single and multi-family housing is one way to increase affordable housing options, it is clear from studies and news reports that the demand for affordable housing outpaces the available supply of housing, not just here in Georgia, but nationwide. Additionally, the cost of new construction often causes increased pricing and moves the new construction out of the reach of those most in need.
If new construction is not the answer to the affordable housing crisis in Georgia, , what other viable tools are available to communities to meet these challenges? A common saying in the historic preservation community is that “the best historic building is one that is being used.” Preserving our historic neighborhoods is another tool that can be put to good use to address the need for more affordable housing
“Historic” as a classification requires a building or a neighborhood to be more than 50 years old, thus in 2023 buildings and neighborhoods built in 1973 or before are considered historic. Many older neighborhoods already meet many of the needs of modern Georgians: proximity to work, access to public transportation, schools, and a variety of shopping opportunities. The HPD sees many examples of older neighborhoods and housing stock being reused for modern needs. In 2022 and 2023, the Environmental Review team reviewed over 450 rehabilitation projects, many involving historic housing, utilizing a variety to HUD programs in Baldwin, Ben Hill, Bleckley, Camden, Chatham, Cherokee, Clarke, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Dougherty, Floyd, Fulton, Gordon, Gwinnett, Hall, Henry, Houston, Jackson, Jefferson, Lowndes, McDuffie, Muscogee, Richmond, Troup, Ware, and Whitfield Counties, among others.
One notable example of a successful housing rehabilitation project is the rehabilitation of the Capitol View Apartments in Atlanta. The Capitol View Apartments were constructed in 1947 using funds from the Federal Housing Administration’s Veterans’ Emergency Housing program, and when opened, were home to veterans and their families. For decades, the complex served as affordable housing for low-income renters without a significant, property-wide rehabilitation since construction. The property was purchased in 2018 and with construction financing secured in 2020, a major rehabilitation project leveraging HUD program funding along with state and national historic preservation tax credits and low income housing tax credits, began. By the summer of 2021, all ten of the historic apartment buildings had been rehabilitated and met the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The Capitol View Apartments are now open to renters and are located in a historic neighborhood where the coveted proximity to work, transportation options, and shopping can be enjoyed by the residents. The property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2023.
New construction and rehabilitation of existing buildings, however, may not be the full answer to the affordable housing question. There are many tools a community can use to address this issue and historic preservation plays an important role in that strategy. Mr. Rypkema, in his 2002 report, suggests that creating more local historic districts and giving priority to older and historic neighborhoods for infrastructure, educational, and recreational facility improvements can be options for local communities to explore. While communities throughout Georgia continue to seek creative solutions to their housing crisis, the Environmental Review team at HPD supports communities utilizing federal agency programs to meet those challenges through the Section 106 review process.
This week we are excited to bring you updates from the future preservationists of Georgia! Graduate students in Historic Preservation and related fields have accomplished a lot this academic year and have contributed to interesting projects across the state and the country! Many are also participating in internships in the preservation field this summer. These students and recent graduates bring so much to the table with their experiences and perspectives. We look forward to seeing what they do in preservation in Georgia and the wider world in the years to come. Read more below about updates provided by four programs across Georgia.
Preservation academic programs in Georgia
Graduate-level preservation degree programs are offered at Georgia State University, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of Georgia. SCAD offers an undergraduate BFA in Preservation Design as well. Preservation-focused courses are offered at Kennesaw State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Southern University, Savannah Technical College, and the University of West Georgia.
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture melds the study of historic structures and sites with preservation technology and sustainability. Within Georgia Tech, the historic preservation initiatives led by Associate Professor Danielle Willkens were awarded seed grants related to documentation and sustainable tourism projects for the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, SC and Petra, Jordan. Federal grants are underway for the following projects:
- “Archival Layers and Public Interpretation for Heritage BIM: Two Atlanta Case Studies” (NCPPT)
- "Digitally Decoding Vernacular Construction: Sellman Tenant House” in Maryland (NCPPT and Smithsonian Institute)
- Emergency stabilization of the English Avenue Elementary School in Atlanta (Atlanta Preservation Center, National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant)
This fall, six students from programs across the College of Design participated in the poster session for the Georgia Statewide Historic Preservation Conference.
The interdisciplinary spring seminar, Race, Space, and Architecture in the United States, references the projects and methodologies of architects and architectural historians as well as ten other fields including ethnographers, sociologists, and technicians. The course covers topics across the U.S., yet the focus is decidedly on the American South, with a close lens on Atlanta. The course is affiliated with Georgia Tech’s Serve Learn Sustain initiative examines intersectionalities between race, ability, gender, and sexual orientation to further explore complexities in policy and practice within the built environment. Working collaboratively to honor erased histories, the course contributes to Atlanta’s documentary record for preservation advocacy and public outreach. This year, students have been working in team to document and visually interpret three sites in Atlanta (Power Plant at the Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill, English Avenue Elementary School, and Westview Cemetery) as well as a condition assessment and HABS set for the First Congregational Church in Marion, AL.
Two PhD students focusing on HBIM and the use of aerial documentation for deficiency detection in historic structures, Junshan Liu and Botao Li, have been actively presenting and publishing their work, with an upcoming workshop in The Netherlands and conference papers at CIPA Florence.
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
Sandra Hall, Madelyn Livingston, Michelle Bard, Hannah Brecker, Alicia Guzman, Ieshia Hall, Brendan Harris, Darlene Hawksley, Joachim Hillier, William Hodge, Paige Jennings, David Moore, Katherine Rambler, and Rachel Staley were awarded 3rd place in the HABS Peterson Prize contest which recognizes the best student architectural documentation drawings of historic buildings. Their set of drawings for the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro, GA are now a permanent part of the HABS collection stored in the Library of Congress. They accepted their award at the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) conference held in Detroit.
Amy Durrell, Rural Schools in Putnam County: 1938-1949, and Michelle Bard, Documenting the Burns Cottage, presented academic posters at the 2022 GA Statewide Historic Preservation Conference.
Michelle Bard presented her poster featuring architectural drawings of the historic Burns Cottage at the 2023 National Council for Public History conference. Her Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) submission, HABS GA 2449, is now part of the permanent collection housed at the Library of Congress
Lauren Reeves is working with the Historic Macon Foundation to develop recommendations for interpreting Oak Ridge Cemetery. Oak Ridge was designated as a burial ground in 1851 for the enslaved.
Natasha Washington and Ricky Yates are surveying a historic Gullah cemetery on Daufuskie Island, SC. The project is supported with funding from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
Eric Menninger is working with Thomasville Landmarks to create a historic structure report of a historic shotgun house in Thomasville, GA
*HPD note: Natasha Washington has also been interning with the Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network (GAAHPN) at the HPD! Additionally, the HPD welcomed Michelle Bard to the staff as an Environmental Review Historian in 2022. Paige Jennings has served as our fantastic CLG Coordinator since 2020.
SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
The following is a list of the graduating students from the MFA, MA, and BFA Preservation Design programs. Congratulations Graduates!
- Jennifer Howell, MFA in Preservation Design, Thesis: Trauma-Informed Design in Adaptive Reuse of Historic Buildings: Builds Community and Stability
- Olivia Arfuso, MA in Preservation Design, Capstone: Tainted by Trauma. Investigating the Impacts of America’s Turbulent History with Mental Health and Determining How the “Difficult Heritage” Ideology Can Be Implemented to Preserve Asylum Architecture.
- Savannah Kruzner, MA in Preservation Design, Capstone: Living Heritage at The Southern Pine Company. Explores how a community’s living heritage can be incorporated in the design of an adaptive reuse project.
- Melanie Schuster, MA in Preservation Design, Capstone: Protecting our Historic Resources: An Exploration of Demolition by Neglect in State Parks.
- James Dillman, BFA in Preservation Design, Capstone: Malls and Rehabilitation
Association for Preservation Technology International, Student Scholar, Emily Schripsema, Presentation: Looking to Our Recent Past to Inform Our Near Future: Applying Preservation Strategies to Late 20th Century Shopping Malls.
The following students will be participating in summer internships:
- Savannah Mae Tuten - Historic Savannah Foundation
- Nathan Barnett - Chautauqua Foundation
- Jackie Boling - Tybee Island Historic Preservation and Tybee Island Main Street
- Zheng He - ForDoz Pharma Corporation
- Daniela Salume - Carolyn Coppola Preservation
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Students enrolled in the University of Georgia’s Master of Historic Preservation program will be entering internships this summer around the state and country, on sites ranging from Mount Rainier to Natchez and from the Channel Islands in California to Cumberland Island off the Georgia Coast. Current students are doing original research on a wide range of preservation topics, including vernacular skate board parks; parking garages; and little-studied architects in Macon and Pittsburgh.
Two examples of ongoing work by MHP students:
Megan McPherson presented a poster based on her thesis at the National Council on Public History annual meeting. Her thesis explored the history and current cultural landscape of Georgia’s first African American state park.
Elizabeth Jones has led community engagement efforts surrounding the preservation of Zion Hill cemetery in Monroe, Ga. This formerly abandoned yet nationally significant cemetery is the burial site for the victims of the Moore’s Ford lynching. Under Jones’ guidance, ground penetrating radar has mapped the cemetery boundaries and likely burial locations of those interred. She has led community-wide cleanup efforts and the installation of new burial markers. Her work was recently featured in the award-winning documentary Unspoken.
As part of their “State-of-the-State Historic Tax Credit” program, The National Trust for Historic Preservation has published a resource guide, webinar, and interactive tools that succinctly present program details for state historic tax credit programs across the country, along with tangible benefits the programs provide. By comparing program features nationwide, these new tools give policy makers, stakeholders, and advocates access to a breadth of options to develop and strengthen state historic tax credit incentives.
The Georgia HPD contributed program information and examples of successful tax incentive projects in the state, particularly examples of resource conservation and positive impacts on affordable housing supply. Legislation establishing the State Income Tax Credit for Rehabilitated Properties was enacted in March 2002, with initial applications eligibility beginning in January 2004. Since then, Georgia has been a national leader in the use of tax incentives for the rehabilitation of historic properties, both residential and commercial.
Watch the Webinar: https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/state-historic-tax-credit-incentive
Check out the Resource Guide and Data Center: https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/state-historic-tax-credit-resource
For more information about the Tax Incentives for Rehabilitated Properties, please visit our website and check out our annual report !
Notice of Intent to Adopt revised Rules for the Georgia State Income Tax Credit for Rehabilitated Historic Property Program, Historic Preservation Division, Department of Community Affairs.
Pursuant to the Requirements of the Georgia Administrative Procedures Act, as amended, attached are the revised Rules for the Historic Preservation Division's State Income Tax Credit for Rehabilitated Historic Property Program. Also attached are a Notice of Intent form and a Summary of the proposed program rule amendments.
Please note that a public hearing will be held virtually on July 26, 2022 at 11:30 AM. The link to this public hearing is below.
Please note the Department of Community Affairs intends to act on the proposed rules at its meeting at 10:30 AM on August 10, 2022 which will be held in Atlanta, Georgia.
