Eight years ago, an outcry over the demolition of historically significant buildings in Philadelphia led then-Mayor Jim Kenney to boost support for the city’s underfunded Historical Commission and jumpstart the designation of new historic districts.
Those efforts have yielded significant results, according to a new report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.
Since 2016, the percentage of all properties under historic designation has doubled from 2.2% to 4.4%, putting Philly slightly above the average rate of designation among large cities, the report said.
About 4.8% of the city’s total area is either part of a district or is a property individually placed on the city’s Register of Historic Places, which means owners must follow guidelines when making certain modifications and are largely barred from demolishing buildings.
Those include new areas in outlying neighborhoods where protection from demolition was once rare, said Hanna Stark, the Preservation Alliance’s policy and communications director.
“Designations are now more geographically diverse than ever, reaching farther into North and West Philadelphia, and this has been a concentrated effort to try to represent underrepresented histories on the register,” Stark said this Tuesday, during the report’s release. “That really goes to show that preservation is not just limited to Center City. It’s citywide.”
The study focuses on the benefits of preserving older homes and buildings for housing affordability and economic growth, with the goal of influencing city policy and specifically Mayor Cherelle Parkers’s $2 billion HOME initiative.
“We have heard for years people saying that historic preservation impedes development, reduces urban density, and restricts the housing supply,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance and a member of Parker’s HOME advisory council. “And we knew in our gut that that wasn’t true, but we didn’t have the data to support it. Now we do.”
Lower rents and incomes in historic districts
The study seeks to measure the economic impact of rehabilitating old buildings, in part from federal and state historic tax credits that are often required to make the work economically feasible.
Nearly 300 such tax credit projects completed over the past 15 years represented an investment of over $4 billion and created more than 2,500 jobs annually, according to the study by PlaceEconomics, a Washington D.C. firm that focuses on the niche field of historic preservation economics.
“Those jobs have paychecks — $141 million in labor income” per year, said the firm’s CEO, Donovan Rypkema. “These are only jobs in Philadelphia, and it meant tax revenues — an average of $8 million a year.”
Since 2010, Philadelphia has seen greater investment in federal historic tax credit projects than any other city, Steinke said.
In addition to the wages and other direct spending, every $100 spent on historic building rehabilitation generates $45.54 in other economic activity, the study found.
The report also marshals data to argue broadly for the importance of preserving older homes, whether or not they are historically significant.
Housing built prior to 1950 makes up 67% of all residential building and 51% of units, and tends to have smaller units, lower rents, and lower values, making it “an important source of naturally occuring affordable housing,” the report says.
In the “older housing study area” PlaceEconomics focused on, median gross rents are 9% lower than in the rest of the city, and the median household income is $55,000, compared to $62,000 across other parts of Philadelphia, it says.
Historic preservation has been controversial, with some homeowners arguing that broad designations covering whole neighborhoods unfairly burden them with expensive design requirements and stifle redevelopments. Lawsuits are underway seeking to overturn recent designations in Washington Square West and two other areas.
But Stark said the report reinforces arguments that preservation benefits residents broadly, beyond architecture and history enthusiasts.
“To us, this report confirms that preservation is not just a niche concern. It’s a housing equity and economic strategy for our city,” Stark said. “As we implement the HOME plan and consider how to expand affordable housing, we think preservation should be central to this concern, specifically with rehabilitation-first policies that keep housing affordable and prevent displacement.”
A wide but changing racial gap
The study provides a wealth of data on 19 historic districts, ranging from the city’s first — Manayunk Main Street, designated in 1984 — through Germantown Urban Village, Southeast Spruce Hill, and Washington Square West, which were designated last year as part of a recent wave of activity by the Historical Commission.
They have a significantly higher average population density than the rest of the city, and account for 3.6% of residents, the report says. Their population has increased 20% since 2010, compared to 4.5% across other parts of Philadelphia.
The districts are significantly less diverse than the city overall, with 69% white residents, compared to 32% for the rest of the Philly as of 2023. They have about 12% Black residents versus 40% in other areas.
However, the ratios have been shifting, with the Black population in designated areas increasing 4.9% between 2010 and 2020.
“Where the city as a whole lost Black population, the Black population grew in historic districts,” Rypkema said. “The Hispanic population, the growth rate in historic districts doubles the rate of the growth in the city as a whole. So the kind of stereotype about what historic districts are, just ain’t so, and is rapidly changing.”
The racial homeownership gap is particularly stark in parts of the city that have been designated historic, according to the report.
In the districts, 81% of homeowners are white, 8.7% Black, and 5.6% Asian. Homeowners elsewhere in the city are about 43% white, 37% Black, and 7.8% Asian.
That, too, is changing somewhat, with the number of non-white owners increasing by 45% in historic districts from 2010 to 2020, compared to 7% in the rest of the Philadelphia.
Reaching out to the administration
Preservation Alliance has shared the study findings with Angela Brooks, the city’s chief housing and urban development officer, and the consulting team working on the HOME initiative, because some of the findings related to older housing “are really relevant to that effort,” Steinke said.
HOME encompasses dozens of existing and new programs to help residents find, keep and maintain homes, including by preserving affordable housing, providing low-interest mortgages and preventing evictions. It’s budgeted at $2 billion over four years, including $800 million from city-issued bonds.
Steinke said the Alliance has been working to get the report to the mayor’s office and wants to brief City Council members on the data as they review Parker’s specific proposals for how to spend the funds.
A briefing on the study is also scheduled with the Philadelphia Crosstown Coalition, an umbrella group of registered civic associations (RCOs) that frequently weigh in on development proposals, he said.
“The data shows that historic preservation is a powerful engine, and we think an under-recognized and underappreciated engine, for investment, jobs, affordability and inclusive growth,” Steinke said.
The post Saving old homes supports affordability, preservationists say appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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