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| Lafayette Theater Townhouses Harlem, New York City Photograph by Jeff Reuben/Untapped Cities untappedcities.com |
Yours truly is back from jury duty purgatory and ready to write.
Today we are going to look at the subject of affordable housing and whether or not historic preservation is preventing cities from building more of it. Jessica Leber of fastcoexist.com ponders the situation in her article "Is Historical Preservation What's Keeping Cities From Building Affordable Housing?" Blogger admits that this question sounds puzzling because historic preservation is a tool available to builders of affordable housing but Ms. Leber asks two questions: "Are wealth city dwellers preventing new development by holding on the past? Or is there room for lots of new housing while maintaining the character of urban landscapes?..." Naturally, the answer is not quite so simple.
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| Pennsylvania Station 1910-63 McKim, Mead & White New York City, New York en,wikipedia.org |
Fifty years after New York City enacted its landmark 1965, in response to the heartbreaking demolition of the Beaux-Arts gem Pennsylvania Station, historic preservation is a white hot topic. The dire ned for affordable housing has engendered intense debate over what are the priorities as urban areas continue to take shape. Ms. Leber outlines the argument:
"On the one hand, people value neighborhoods like New York's Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights for their character and vitality-and tourists, businesses, and the wealthy flock there to work and live. One the other, the only real solution to the affordable housing crisis, advocates say, is to build more, denser, and taller housing-and historic districts have became too large a barrier to doing this."
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| St. George's Church New York City, New York centrici.hypothese.org |
We've made it impossible to build and impossible to change the most economically and culturally viable parts of the country by ceding to NIMBY-ists...The right answer is not to straightjacket mass neighborhoods...it's so important we allow cities to continue to change and keep growing.
New York City is home to 138 historic districts, where "...groups of buildings, blocks, and sometimes whole neighborhoods defined by a 'distinct sense of space' and a 'coherent streetscape' that represents one historic architecture style."
Within the groupings, razing some of the buildings is strictly prohibited and other can only be replaced in kind-architecture that adheres to the historic fabric of the area. Thus, as the theory goes, "it's going to be pretty hard to build a new residential, affordable unit high-rise in the heart of the Upper East Side, perpetuating a cycle that only allows the wealth to afford living in this area."
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| Greenwich Village New York City, New York nymag.com |
Just how big of an impact does this really have? This is at the heart of argument. Preservation advocates observe that a paltry 4 percent of New York City is included in a historic district. The advocates believe that this tiny amount of land will not alter the balance on affordable housing plus or minus. Donovan Rypkema, a principle at the real estate and economic development firm PlaceEconomics told the Cities of Tomorrow conference:
To say that historic districts are responsible for the lack of affordability is to say that the federal deficit is to blame on the amount that goes to veterans benefits. (nycitiesfortomorrow.com)
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| New York City Brownstone stvinc.com |
If we have a vision that we're going to build towers for low-income people and put them in the most distant part of the city...that feels profoundly disturbing to me. The heart of the city is mixing of different groups. (Ibid)
Jessica Leber cites a citylimits.org article, "The Enduring Farce of Historic Preservation in NYC," that refers to dueling studies released this year that make the case for both sides.
"A May report by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, prepared by PlaceEconomics, found that historic districts are already the most dense areas in their boroughs, according to City Limits. Another, by the Historic Districts Council, found that, between 1970 and 2020, historic district designation hasn't seemed to affect rents and affordability much compared to other neighborhoods."
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| Second Avenue and East Sixth Street East Village: Lower Eastside Historic District New York City, New York cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com |
However, other research contradicts the above claims. Ms. Leber writes, "A report by NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy found that historic districts mostly had the same density as surrounding areas and also had far less new construction in the last decade. They also were often wealthier and whiter..."
No one is suggesting that developers be permitted to run rampant over New York's most beloved places, as was the case in the first half of the twentieth century. Be that as it may, to both sides, it is imperative that they understand what it is we love about historic places and they can work with the needs of contemporary social problems.
Donovan Rypkema said, "historic preservation has also changed with the times. It used to be about preserving monumental building that once housed rich, dead white guys. Most new districts and buildings today about preserving ties to the city's ignored populations...: Specifically,
Historic preservation today...is about the evolution of the story of the city.
Is historic preservation an obstacle to building affordable housing?
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