Testimony Before the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs Board - Sept. 12, 2013
My name is Steve Dieterichs, and I am the director of the Main Street program and the heritage preservation officer for the City of Corsicana. I come before you to speak in favor of a modification to the Qualified Allocation Plan that would level the playing field for redevelopment of historic properties.
Low Income Housing Tax Credits are vital to these projects, which often must also layer historic tax credits, EPA Brownfields clean-up grants and local financing just to be feasible.
Recent changes to the program’s “Draft Allocation Plan” which provide for more favorable scoring of projects located in higher income areas and in areas with the highest performing school districts place redevelopment projects within central business districts at a distinct disadvantage. Historic downtown properties in need of redevelopment are often surrounded by lower income neighborhoods and lower performing schools. The scoring criteria, as established in the TDHCA Allocation Plan, make a winning application highly unlikely for these types of redevelopment projects.
It’s about more than housing. There are notable ancillary benefits to redeveloping neglected historic properties. Currently, many of these buildings are publicly owned. The sale to a private developer will add millions of dollars to the appraisal district’s tax rolls, once redevelopment is complete, which can have a considerable impact in rural communities like Corsicana. Furthermore, rehabilitation of historical properties can be seen as the “greenest” of construction methods. The reuse of existing infrastructure and the harnessing of “embodied energy” that went into the building’s construction a century or more ago, simply make sense, both from and economic and an environmental standpoint.
A single successful LIHTC redevelopment project can be a springboard for sustainable economic development activity in a downtown area, as developers seek economies of scale with complementary market-rate historic redevelopment projects.
I ask you to look favorably upon the proposed revisions to the Qualified Allocation Plan which would, once again, make historic redevelopment projects competitive in the awarding competition.
Low Income Housing Tax Credits are vital to these projects, which often must also layer historic tax credits, EPA Brownfields clean-up grants and local financing just to be feasible.
Recent changes to the program’s “Draft Allocation Plan” which provide for more favorable scoring of projects located in higher income areas and in areas with the highest performing school districts place redevelopment projects within central business districts at a distinct disadvantage. Historic downtown properties in need of redevelopment are often surrounded by lower income neighborhoods and lower performing schools. The scoring criteria, as established in the TDHCA Allocation Plan, make a winning application highly unlikely for these types of redevelopment projects.
It’s about more than housing. There are notable ancillary benefits to redeveloping neglected historic properties. Currently, many of these buildings are publicly owned. The sale to a private developer will add millions of dollars to the appraisal district’s tax rolls, once redevelopment is complete, which can have a considerable impact in rural communities like Corsicana. Furthermore, rehabilitation of historical properties can be seen as the “greenest” of construction methods. The reuse of existing infrastructure and the harnessing of “embodied energy” that went into the building’s construction a century or more ago, simply make sense, both from and economic and an environmental standpoint.
A single successful LIHTC redevelopment project can be a springboard for sustainable economic development activity in a downtown area, as developers seek economies of scale with complementary market-rate historic redevelopment projects.
I ask you to look favorably upon the proposed revisions to the Qualified Allocation Plan which would, once again, make historic redevelopment projects competitive in the awarding competition.
