Historic Preservation: A Key Tool to Address the Housing Crisis

New Hampshire’s constrained housing market threatens the state’s economic growth, the stability of its communities and the health of its families. An increasing number of people are unable to find housing they can afford or are paying an unsustainably high percentage of their income for housing. Younger people are unable to put down roots in the communities where they grew up, and employers of all types and sizes are unable to recruit and retain employees.

Franklin Mills successfully transformed into community housing space by CATCH.

Refurbishing and reconfiguring older buildings can yield some of the desperately needed variety of types, sizes and locations of new housing units. What do you envision when you think about new housing opportunities in New Hampshire? Old farmhouses along country roads? Victorian neighborhoods of singles or duplexes? Rehabilitated mill buildings along rivers, or old school buildings in town or village centers?

Adapting vacant or under-used historic buildings to meet housing needs has many benefits. These include locations within existing downtown or village centers already served by existing infrastructure such as water, sewer and roads; the potential for reducing automobile travel and all its negatives; and the opportunity to revitalize certain blighted or at-risk buildings. Tax revenues may also increase.

Restoring historic properties to include residential units not only makes more housing choices available to residents of all ages but is an important key to revitalizing downtowns and town centers. In their book, Communities & Consequences II: Rebalancing New Hampshire’s Human Ecology, NH Preservation Alliance board member Lorraine Stuart Merrill and demographer Peter Francese highlight Lancaster’s use of preservation to add more diverse housing options and create a more thriving downtown. Greg Cloutier, a retired engineer from Lancaster, has invested in several award-winning preservation projects to restore and repurpose key buildings in Lancaster’s historic downtown. He is proud of the locally owned businesses that have prospered in the restored buildings. But he emphasizes, “It’s the residential units that make the whole thing work. There are people downtown, coming and going. The activity attracts more people. It gets businesses interested in being here.”

A 2019 NH Housing Finance Authority housing needs analysis estimated the state is short 20,000 units. Deputy Executive Director Ben Frost notes the situation has “probably gotten worse since 2019.” Governor Chris Sununu’s Council on Housing Stability has a goal of 13,500 new units in the state by 2024. Solving this crisis will require innovative policies as well as new and continuing collaboration between governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

Let’s look at some ideas to encourage these outcomes.

Use the past as a guide

Architect and author Thomas Hubka points to in-law apartments at the property level, and secondary housing along alleys at the community level to show how early 20th century housing in towns and cities offered varied size options for communities that we should consider today.

The refurbished interior of the Franklin Mills living space.

Such right-size efforts add housing and increase density, particularly near historic transit lines and employment centers. Often these are highly diverse, mixed-use, and livable areas. The social and economic diversity of older neighborhoods is eroded when larger, higher-rent projects displace existing residents and businesses. More nuanced, incremental ways of adding density in older neighborhoods are needed. This also increases housing without converting open space lands like farms and forests. The potential for adding “density without demolition” is highlighted in a National Trust study of Little Havana in Miami. Researchers found that even in this dense urban neighborhood, more than 500 new buildings and 10,000 new residents could be added without demolishing a single structure.

Similarly, a 2019 analysis of 17 metropolitan areas by Zillow found that allowing an additional housing unit (such as an Accessory Dwelling Unit) on just 10 percent of existing single-family lots could yield almost 3.3 million additional housing units. What’s more, with building and construction combined accounting for 39% of global carbon emissions, refurbishing and reusing existing buildings can result in just half the carbon impact of new construction.

Debunk myths

At the community level, we’re suffering from a deep-seated belief by many that additional housing drives up education costs and property taxes, and that age-restricted housing is cheaper and better for communities. Merrill and Peter Francese show in their book, Communities & Consequences II: Rebalancing New Hampshire’s Human Ecology, how these myths are not only wrong-headed, but have resulted in pushing young people away from our communities and our state.

Ribbon cutting ceremony for the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness

Many developers and policy makers believe that rehabilitation is more expensive than new construction. In fact, a recent study by the National Council of State Housing Agencies found that the average new construction cost for low-income tax credit housing projects is $209,094 per unit, while the average acquisition and rehabilitation cost is $153,394 per unit.

Tailor your regulatory structure and incentives to the community’s vision and needs

Building and zoning codes are often not compatible with reuse projects. Navigating through review processes adds time and cost, particularly for projects that combine multiple tax credits and incentives.

Promote under-used incentives

Federal and state tax incentives help fill redevelopment’s financial gap. Some, like RSA 79E, seem under-used in New Hampshire. Consider new incentives to help smaller-scale projects succeed.

Voice support for local proposals

Too often only those opposed to housing development proposals turn out for local planning meetings. Let your local leaders know you support efforts to save historic buildings and find creative new uses including affordable residential options.