 So let's go ahead and get started, so thank you all for joining us. For those of you joining us for this first time preservation leadership forum is the professional membership program of the national press for historic preservation. Today's webinar is made possible by members of the preservation leadership forum. And we sincerely thank each and every one of you who is a forum member for joining us today and for their continued support. So before we begin just a couple of technical logistical details, we are going to be taking questions during the webinar and we ask that you send them to the q amp a function. And that will go directly to the panelists, and you are welcome to submit at any point during the webinar, but we are going to be waiting to the end to answer all of your questions so again please remember to submit them in the q amp a. But you are encouraged to use the chat to tell us where you're from and let us know how your weather is here in Washington DC it's kind of smoking today. We have enabled the closed caption functioning, and then following the webinar we are going to be sending out a recording directly to the email that you use to register with. And of course all of our forum webinars are available on our on our web page at the National Trust. Next slide please. So my name is Renee Coleman I have the pleasure of being the senior director in the preservation services and outreach department. And it's my pleasure to be here with you today and joined by some amazing colleagues. Next slide. In January, for those of you who were with us then, we had the pleasure of releasing an updated state historic tax credit resource guide, and a companion national nationwide data center. And we hope that you all made use of those. During these resources over the past legislative session. I know that two states were added since that was published in January. In Nebraska and Minnesota both reinstated their program so we currently have a total of 39 state historic tax credit programs across the, across the country so we hope those resource resources were helpful to you all in your advocacy. Next slide. So I think we know that the world has changed in the decades since many state historic tax credits were established. And recently we've seen the redevelopment efforts impacted by several things including the changes in the federal historic tax credit program material shortages rising interest rates, changing market conditions post coven and probably many more things in your own particular area. And in addition, several urgent policy issues have emerged right, including the need to address the shortage of affordable housing that we see in every state both urban and rural and then, of course to help address the global challenge of climate change. So today we are pleased to release during this webinar a new report and some new policy strategies, recommendations on how state historic tax credits can become an even more powerful tool to create new affordable housing, support sustainable development and reduce carbon emissions. So these resources, which you can see where to download them are made possible through the generous support of David and Julia E line. They are supportive preservation in Milwaukee throughout the wonderful state of Wisconsin of historic trust, historic tax credits, and of course the National Trust. So please join me in saying thank you for their generous support which made this research possible. Now through this process we spoke and interviewed many professionals working in the fields of sustainability, affordable housing and preservation, and you're going to meet some of them on this webinar today. Next slide. So today we're going to see some amazing things through this engagement process. And I'm always so inspired by the, by the stories of people who have taken historic preservation as a tool and utilized it to help other people. And these are a couple of amazing examples that we unearthed. There's a lot of housing that is being created through the assistance of state historic tax credits. One example is from Massachusetts which is has an amazing policy put in place. And the courthouse lofts in Worcester were took the historic tax credits and turned it into mixed rate housing. So you can see that there. And then on the right, solar panels are actually incentivized by the New York homeowners rehabilitation tax credit. And you see some examples there in Brooklyn. We also learned that New York has a fantastic program. And thanks to our colleague who did some data crunching and looking at the numbers from that we received from the ship owes office. We learned that over 11,000 housing units have been created through the aid of the state historic tax credit with the preservation of over 4,600 low to moderate income housing units so very impressive numbers from New York through the help of their historic tax credit. Next slide please. And now it's my pleasure to introduce the panelists that we will have speaking on the webinar today. I'm joined by two colleagues from the National Trust, Jim Lindberg is the senior director of policy, and Shaw Spray is the vice president of government relations here at the National Trust. And we're very pleased that they were on the team that helped did the research, as well as being joined by Kate Lenzer, our senior GIS project manager, who is not here with us today in person but here with us in spirit. I'd like to also introduce Aaron McDade with architecture 2030 senior program director. She leads the organization's public policy and building reuse initiatives, focusing on developing data driven solutions for the building sector So I think some of you tuned in to see her recently in a webinar here, but recent efforts include co developing the care tool, which enables stakeholders to qualify and value the admissions reduction potential of building reuse. She is also a managing architecture 2030 climate positive design for landscape and infrastructure initiative. Very pleased to have you here with us today. Aaron Beck is a development project manager with Alexander company. And he has 23 years of real estate development and investment experience. He's previously held positions with the National Trust Community Investment Corporation and Baker Tilly. And he currently serves as the president of the Wisconsin historical real estate foundation. So we're very pleased to have you with us today. Today is the executive director of main preservation, which is a statewide preservation nonprofit organ dedicated to promoting and preserving historic places buildings downtown neighborhoods in Maine. She previously served as the vice president of policy and programs at the municipal art society of New York. She was the executive director of the friends of Upper East Side historic districts. And I think you're going to be really excited about learning about what Maine is currently doing, and then what what policy initiatives that they are putting forth. And our last panelist to join us today is William towns. He is a leading scholar and advocate for housing equity among ever underrepresented communities. He joined Gorman and company as a national market president for community revitalization and public housing. And before joining with Gorman and company, he worked at four SPA partners for he was the managing director of Chai town impact and equity fund focusing on funding women and entrepreneurs of color. What I find really gratifying is he also is a professor and continues to teach his expertise and share that with others. So please join me in thanking him for joining us today. And now I would like to hand it off to my colleagues Jim Lindberg and Shaw Sprig to share the policy recommendations. Okay, thank you Renee hi everyone Jim Lindberg with the National Trust, along with my colleague Shaw Sprig. We're just going to take about 10 minutes to highlight some of the recommendations that came out of our discussions, and then you'll get to hear from our panelists. We do encourage you to download and read the report there's more details more recommendations in there so we're just going to sort of scratch the surface here and hopefully get you excited about what what, what, what, what's in there. I want to start by noting that states around the country have long been a source of innovation when it comes to start tax credit policy so some of the recommendations that we're going to be talking about are actually things that others are already doing and that we think could be inspiring to do as well and then we also have some new recommendations, some ideas that are as yet untested but we think they have potential and and hope that some of you will pick those up and run and show us what works. So our first recommendation, if we can go to the next slide is to do something that a number of states are already doing related to affordable housing and that's to increase or bump up the percentage of states or tax credit that is being offered for projects that meet certain policy goals, including creating new affordable housing or reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. This is an approach that several states are already using to encourage housing projects, Maine and Delaware, for example. For this to work though the increase needs to be meaningful so at least a 5% bump up, perhaps more Delaware's credit actually goes as high as 40% if certain criteria related to housing or met so bumping up your credit to encourage projects that meet those goals related to housing or energy consumption and carbon emissions is is one idea. Is that came out of our discussions is to raise or even eliminate per project caps for developments that we meet goals related to housing and sustainability. And this can help attract development interest in those big complex difficult projects that are out there. The white elephants conversions of mills industrial buildings for example college campuses or other kinds of campuses. There's a whole new generation of large post war office towers and some of our cities that are coming of age and and maybe candidates for projects that are too low, and caps that are too low, often mean that staged architects credits won't be financially impactful for some of these large projects and as a result they may remain unrealized so that's, we think an important strategy to consider. Another interesting idea, and one that is out there just in in in a few places is to create a general building reuse credit. It might be a parallel credit that would go along with the status or tax credit that applies to that large set of older buildings that we know are important, including buildings that may not be eligible for designation but still worth resources that are worth reusing and South Carolina is an innovator here. We have a stated historic tax credit but also a 25% credit for both middle building reuse and vacant building reuse. So adding a reuse credit, you know might be might be a way to really make an impact and reach a larger number of buildings and it also might be a place where a more flexible design review standards could prioritize the reuse of high carbon building materials, for example, which a lot of people are looking at. Another one that we talked about with our group was, what can we do to encourage solar installations make that easier. The new federal IRA legislation is really driving a surge of interest in solar and we also heard from our conversations that some state housing programs are starting to require projects to go all electric and solar is going to be a big part of that. Clearly the IRS has said that solar arrays cannot be included as qualified rehab expenses for the federal credit but states have the flexibility to treat this issue differently so, as Renee noted in New York for example, the state credit for homeowners allow solar to count as a QRE and the uptake has really been impressive, allowing property owners to combine both historic and energy incentives so they're finding that those solar arrays fit just fine on historic buildings in New York and that might be an idea that other states might want to consider copying as well. All right, so now I'm going to turn it over to Shaw to talk about four other policy ideas. I'll just note at the outset that I appreciate the opportunity to work with you and the colleagues here today and the colleagues we met with over the course of several months in assembling these recommendations, which really, I think set a helpful foundation for thinking about historic tax credit policy. So before Jim let off for those states that award credits based on a ranking system, a straightforward approach to increase affordable housing creation and more sustainable redevelopment is to award additional points for projects that achieve certain benchmarks, so this can be a certain number of affordable housing units or reducing operational carbon emissions for example. So talking about point systems, another important recommendation from the report is for historic preservation advocates to participate in the, in the development of your state's qualified allocation plan qps, which are used to determine how low income housing tax credits are distributed. Now many states have qps that account for historic preservation in some way that might be a set aside or extra points awarded additional considerations like points for historic preservation outcomes can help attract more affordable housing development in historic properties. Another important recommendation we wanted to highlight was the need to, I know we say minimum rehab threshold, but this one actually has to do with making it easier to combine credits various credits and incentives. So, for example, a common sense approach when calculating the cost per square foot for affordable housing projects would be to reduce the cost calculation by the amount of historic tax credits generated seems like a pretty smart way to to achieve dual policy objectives there. And taking a page from our federal historic tax credit advocacy, ensuring state HTC's don't need to be deducted from a building's basis calculation. So essentially that the value remains with the property would help attract more affordable housing developers to historic properties and better line historic tax credit with low income housing tax credit incentives. And finally just on the energy efficiency side we also want to note the practical importance of better aligning energy efficiency standards and historic preservation standards. As the report notes, energy efficiency exceptions for historic properties are narrowing. And so a balanced approach to better align different standards will help achieve multiple policy objectives. And finally on. We heard that adequately staffed state historic preservation offices is really a key component of all of this. Having adequate staff will ensure historic tax credit programs operate efficiently and effectively. Our national partners are working at the federal level to push for strong HPF funding. And we know there are significant demands on Chippo offices, especially as Jim noted after passage of the inflation reduction act and deployment of federal funds for infrastructure. So that that concludes our core policy recommendations I'll turn it back over to you, Jim. All right, great. Thanks, y'all. So, you know, just a teaser, please take a look at the report there are more recommendations in there and more details on each of these. But now we're going to hear with some here from some of the smart people who helped us come up with these ideas. People who are working on the ground and around the country in different capacities and we'll start with Aaron McDade who you heard is with architecture 2030. And she's been working particularly on local climate policy and we think it'll be interesting and important to hear from Aaron he'll talk a little bit about some of the climate policy trends that are going to be increasingly impacting the historic buildings and state historic tax credit projects in the coming years I'll turn it over to Aaron. Thank you, Jim. And thanks for the good setup to what I'll be talking about today so if we can flip to my next slide here. I'm like Jim said I'm going to be talking primarily about kind of what's coming down the pike in the decar policy landscape for existing buildings but before I talk about that I want to really briefly look to the next slide. Talk about what the impact potential and really kind of the responsibility we have here as people who are touching and impacting the existing built environment. So this chart shows total global emissions by sector and we can see up here this 27% from building operations annually, that is all from our existing building stock. When we're touching our existing buildings, we have the potential to reduce over a quarter of total global emissions, and that is just a tremendous tremendous responsibility, but also tremendous impact potential obviously. And the beauty of building reuse is that it is the biggest bang for our buck in terms of climate and decarbonization reductions, pretty much possible across the board and that's because those other two pipes. The chart here are really what we call embodied carbon and they're all the impacts from primarily building new buildings. And we know that if we are preserving and reusing buildings we're preserving and reusing a significant amount of materials, especially if we can preserve things like structures in facades. And so the more that we not only don't have embodied carbon emissions because we're building new construction, but are reducing that 27% of total global emissions from our existing building stock. We're really going to be making dramatic and significant impacts on our global effort to deal with the climate crisis. And if you click to the next slide. Just another kind of sense of the impact potential and the responsibility we really have here. Projections indicate that by 2040 which is the which we really need to try to be zero carbon globally if we want to stay within Paris agreement targets, two thirds of the building stock will be buildings that exist today. So that means all of these buildings that are surrounding us across the blow right now will still be emitting carbon if we do not tackle them immediately and start achieving zero emissions. So if you click to the next slide for me. At a really high level, what it takes to actually decarbonize a building is pretty simple from a conceptual standpoint, not from an implementation standpoint I understand that. But from a conceptual standpoint there are really only three things that a building needs to do to decarbonize, and especially an existing building. The first is optimize energy efficiency. And that's really the one we're all most familiar and comfortable with. And once the consumption of energy in the building is down as much as possible, then we want to make sure that we're using as much renewable energy as possible and that can be either be on site solar we saw some of that already, or the procurement of offsite renewable energy. And then finally of course the last piece is to make sure that all of the equipment used on the building is fossil fuel tree. So if you are feeding it with that clean renewable energy, the building is not emitting any emissions. So this is kind of the thing to keep in mind when we're talking about the policy landscape coming down the pike. These are the three pieces that all of the policies are going to be trying to tackle. So if you click to the next slide. We have a quick snapshot of the landscape and I know we have people from a diversity of regions across the country on this call today. And so what this shows is the current state of benchmarking and transparency policies, and we can see at the bottom of the orange box that if we have regions with a blue dot or a purple dot already have policies in place where buildings are required not just to disclose their energy consumption and potentially their emissions, but to actually start reducing those two metrics. But if you click to the next slide here. What we anticipate is going to happen is that an increasingly large number of jurisdictions across the country are going to be adopting what we call building performance standards. And again, this is another kind of current state of the landscape here, where we can see in the light blue is all the places that have currently passed building performance standards and don't worry I'm going to talk about what that means in a second. Dark blue is the cohort of jurisdictions that is participating in the national building performance standards coalition, and then green is both. And so, these are the leaders in a sense the ones that are participating in that coalition and have passed these policies that will be setting the standard, but we anticipate that building performance standards will become the de facto policy for existing building on de carb reduction in the US. So if you click to the next slide. What does this mean then for developers for designers for people who are actually touching the built environment in our existing building stock. So the first key element of a building performance standard is that it establishes intermediate and final building energy or or emissions targets. So one of that is to provide this kind of longevity so that owners developers investors etc can have time and certainty that they need to plan for what interventions will be required to touch their building stock. The next point here is that typically building performance standards will have different compliance pathways I'm going to go into details about both of these points on my last slide here. So that there's flexibility in terms of the strategies achieve used to achieve decarbonization and obviously when we're talking about historic renovation and preservation. This is incredibly important. And then the last point here is that there, there will be a consistent reporting framework and period for this and typically this will build on in a line with jurisdictions existing trend disclosure and reporting ordinances which many of you are probably already familiar with working with and so I know I got to go quickly here we don't have a ton of time but I just wanted to highlight some organizations that are doing really great work on building performance standards and you can go and read a lot more if you're curious about the metrics or the processes or the potential for your jurisdiction to adopt one of these. And so my last slide here I apologize I know I'm taking more than my five minutes. The kind of high level but again rubber beats the road what will this look like for folks who are touching these existing buildings. So I mentioned that some of the building performance standards will have energy based targets and some of them will have emissions based targets. And this is a quick again snapshot of the current state of the landscape where we can see if it's green that jurisdiction has an emissions based metric and if it's blue that means they have a energy based performance standard metrics and so that would mean you know an EUI as opposed to a GHG metric is what we'd be looking at at a very high level. And then if you click my last little piece here my few pieces, the multiple compliance pathways piece that we will be looking at typically all of these building performance standards are going to have both a performance based and a prescriptive based compliance pathway. And as examples of what that means performance based is essentially a target will be set. So like I said it might be an energy efficient target it might be an emissions target it could even be something like you have to fully electrify, and it is up to the designers the developers the owners to figure out how they're going to implement versus a prescriptive based compliance pathway, something like we require X amount of, you know, LED light replacement and weatherization and specific equipment replacement. Those prescriptive based pathways are going to be much more restricted and rigid but we can see how those can align very well with historic and affordable reuse redevelopment credits. I apologize that was my last slide I took too much time let's go. Thank you Aaron. So, I'm Jonathan back with the Alexander company development project manager and I've been with the firm, nearly 20 years but the company goes back to 1982 we're based in Madison, Wisconsin and we follow a lot of our business where the good credit credit historic programs are we've done over 280 buildings and I'm just going to touch on a few of the states that you know well they've developed programs that's generally where we've gone and look for projects. We've done projects in Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina. Kind of anywhere so we just brought a little map up to show you and a lot of these days all of one thing in common good status or tax credit programs. This is one of the first projects I worked on is a National Park Seminar is a Maryland project was a mixed use development and we had 66 affordable housing units and we were able to utilize or were awarded 3 million in state of store tax credits. We this project was completed at a cost of 110 million. And again, we're the project is right outside the Washington DC area and led us to a number of other projects in the DC metro area. We ended up really liking the Missouri state of store tax credit program and I've done a lot of work in Kansas City so this is the first project that we took on. This is the professional building. This was completed for 21 million 132 apartment units. And this is just reached the 15 year compliance period for the affordable housing tax credit program. And we ended up doing the federal courthouse also in Kansas City, this project was completed in 2011, a very unique GSA project that we ended up picking up. And ended up really doing some beautiful apartments with the Missouri state credit tax credit as a key financing vehicle for this development. And of course we went over to Iowa, our neighbor, and we ended up doing five projects in the Davenport area, all affordable, and that led us to look for other opportunities in the Des Moines and Dubuque area as well. Our first project using the Virginia credit was the master development of the former Washington DC penitentiary warden. We are still actually working on this project. This is a huge development right outside the DC metro area. And 171 apartments, 126 are market rate and 45 are affordable. And one of the unique things about the Virginia credit is that it helped with our infrastructure improvements, which not a lot of status to our tax credits do but Virginia is just one of the best programs out there for us to utilize. I think this is just an overview of how large this development is and I believe for the National Trust Preservation Conference there's going to be tours of this development coming up in November. I feel like the North Carolina they had a mill credit that paid for 40% of the rehabilitation. And so we picked up a project in Greensboro that just placed in service in 2021. So we're always looking for projects in the Carolinas North Carolina and South Carolina South Carolina has got one of the best state programs for you know conversion of mills and doing affordable housing. I just want to talk a little bit about our home state of Wisconsin early on in our life cycle as a firm we did a lot of affordable housing without a state historic credit so there was a lot of low hanging fruit. In the 1980s and early 90s, but it got more challenging. And so we were lucky to get a state historic tax credit in 2014. It was an uncapped program and in 14. We, we faced threat with our governor who ended up knowing how successful the program was going to be, you know, ended up trying to shut it off in 2015, and we started doing economic impact studies and showing really what the credit was worth to, you know, both large and small communities throughout the state. And so we had to do these economic impact studies where we would contact all the developers really figure out you know what the catalytic impacts were how many jobs were created with the new property tax revenue was. And we were able to maintain the credit, we ended up with a cap credit of three and a half million but again these these programs, the development and the nonprofit preservationists and consultants really have to fight to save them and so one of the big impacts that we ended up doing with the Milwaukee soldier home, and this was a project that was on the National Trust 11 most endangered. It was a campus that was really commissioned right after the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln's last acts of legislation that he signed was a system of care for veterans and Milwaukee was selected as a site. And there was a number of buildings on this campus that the federal government owned that were just in complete this repair for decades. And we, because we got the state of store credit that was one of the lobbying tools that we used to convince the VA that we could have the resources in order to develop these for affordable housing for veterans at risk of homelessness. This project ended up opening up in 2021 rates 101 units of housing for veterans and ended up winning the National Trust Richard greenhouse award 2021. We just completed a project in Rhode Island. It was our first time using the Rhode Island credit. You know, it was great program to use and we're looking for more projects to do in Providence there's just such a great building stock there for us. So here's some before and this project is just wrapped up right now it's 101 units and a total cost of 30 million. We currently are doing another project in Virginia. This is one of our largest projects. It's a 550,000 square foot building in Danville. And again, without the state of Virginia 25% credit, you know, we wouldn't be able to tackle, you know, these types of developments. So really when we're leaving the state of Wisconsin, we are going where the state historic credits are. So up next for us. We're looking in New York to the left. That's the Buffalo Central Terminal. We were really watching closely to the state of New York tax credit that was going to be increased for white elephant projects which the Buffalo Central Terminal definitely is linking Nebraska, we're looking at a powerhouse right now and we were scrambling to get a state tax credit award whether Nebraska credit was going to disappear so we're very happy that the credit came back but we were able to get our reservation in time. And then we're doing more projects in Wisconsin for the soldier home now to provide more supportive services to the veterans that are living on that campus. So anyway, thank you very much, and we'll go to the next speaker. Good afternoon. I'm Tara Kelly, executive director of main preservation. Thanks for having me here today. Next slide. And next one, please. Thanks. As you've heard before from Renee main preservation is a statewide historic preservation organization. Next. We have five key areas of work and today I'll highlight our role in advocating for our historic tax credit. Next. We have commissioned and produced for economic development. Sorry, economic impact studies to push for extension of our state credit results from the 2020 report are shown here. But updated numbers are included in the national trust report that was released today as well as the national data center. And as you can see here, our state that credit that pairs with the federal credit has been very successful. In 2021, the office of program evaluation and government accountability conducted an independent review of our credit as a request of the state legislature. They found that our program is structure and and administration are found and efficient that the positive outcomes exceed the stated historic preservation goals promoting affordable housing job creation and economic growth. And in some it was a rave review. So this opaga analysis led to the passage of an extension of our programs to 2030 just last year. Next. The report also included recommendations for improving our program's data management and job outcomes, as well as legislative reporting requirements, clarifying the purpose of our state small credit and expanding eligibility. Next. This opened the door for us to introduce new legislation and I'd like to take a few minutes to describe this proposal to you. LD 1810 came out of a year's worth of work, serving other state programs like New York. We're working with agencies like our ship. Oh, the main revenue service and the government government office of policy innovation and future as well as partners that grow smart main build main main housing authority and the main coalition for affordable housing. Next. First, we are minimizing the burden on our ship out to report the legislature by changing the biannual biannual requirement to every five years. We're also improving the small credit and be increasing the base to 30% the affordable housing booster to 15% and the QRE cap to $1 million. We're using a historic homeowners credit with a 25% base and QRE is between 5,000 and 250,000 plus 5% boosters for income, sorry, low income property owners, affordable rental units, and vacant properties. Next, we're working with agencies like our ship that last year main passed the law making accessory dwelling units as of right in most of the state. We designed this program with this new policy in mind to help incentivize the creation of housing within existing buildings rather than new construction in city town and village resident taxpayers who own or will own eligible properties that are also their primary residences are eligible to take the credit. It includes ancillary buildings on the property that contributes to its significance and also allows for multifamily dwelling for the owner has a primary residence. Next. We don't have a state register. Instead, properties need to be determined eligible, so not listed but eligible for the national register of historic places. The ship out has also allowed some flexibility for locally designed for sorry for local designations, whether individual or contributing to a district that closely model national register criteria. Next. Finally, it's important to note that this credit is for exterior expenses only, but it does include energy efficiency and resiliency upgrades. So conversely, interior work does not qualify. Next. Thank you, and I look forward to our discussion feel free to reach out my email is on the slide, and I think that Priya has put some links in the chat to provide you with more information about our proposal. Oh, great. I'm up next. Again, my name is William towns. I'm with Gorman and company. We are an affordable housing developer out of Oregon, Wisconsin. And I think what I want to do is really just take a moment and talk briefly about what we've heard so far from our phenomenal sort of panelists, and then talk about how this sort of relates to how we continue to preserve existing affordable housing using historic tax credits. So one thing I think in the theme that you're sort of here from what we've been saying today is that the historic tax credit really is a flexible tool that sort of yields itself to have what I refer to a sort of multifanality, meaning that by using historic tax credits we can have more than one single solution at the end. It isn't just simply creating new housing or simply repurposing buildings. It's increasing emissions. It's increasing jobs is having an economic impact these sorts of things. So it's an incredibly, I think flexible tool to sort of use. I think also one thing I think we can hear particularly from what Aaron has talked about and sort of looking at this country for where he is working on these historic preservation deals is that in a time of a divided country, historic tax credits are in blue states, red states, rural towns, big cities, urban areas, these sorts of things. But again, it's this incredibly flexible tool that can be customized really for your local sort of use where you're at your city or town to really again repurpose, re-energize, redevelop these communities in a way but for without the historic tax credit would not be possible. And the way Gorman looks at using historic tax credits and the work that we do really is in the continuing preservation of existing affordable housing. So my team works exclusively with public housing agencies, and we have used successfully historic tax credits to really sort of add the boost to preserve the existing housing, particularly public housing, to preserve and reuse these particular properties and extend their life further out. The credit is also incredibly flexible that it allows us to at times enhance the property while still keeping it historic. So SHIPA and the teams have been incredibly helpful in helping us sort of understand how do you preserve a 1940s public housing complex but make it modernized in a way that allows for new vision and life to be put back in. The other question I get often is why would you want to preserve a 1940s, 1930s public housing building, giving some of the history and sort of imagery that the public housing sort of brings up. We found actually just the opposite, that the individuals who've grown up and lived in these communities I remember when they were first developed are very fond of the memories that they had when they grew up there. This was a place where many of them met their friends, where they went to school, where they had family reunions, these sorts of things. And in one case in the building in Cincinnati, we discovered by doing some historical research that in fact this public housing building had a weird connection in a basement that was sort of different than some of the other uses. And what it turned out is this was a place where Muhammad Ali would come to the community and provide free boxing and training for the kids and youth that were there. So these buildings have a history and it's really about how do we sort of pull that out and use them to preserve them and historic tax credits again have been an incredibly helpful tool and not only preserving the existing units but allowing us to enhance them in a way that modernizes them, expands bathrooms and bedrooms and things in a way while keeping it historic as we continue to sort of go forward. And so again, I think the work that the National Trust has done in this research project by providing the data and the information becomes an incredibly powerful tool that we can all use in the work that we're doing in our local communities in our states, federal and local to show the impact that these tools have in preserving not only affordable housing but the creation of jobs, the increase in the tax base, and other things that that we have done. And again, I think as we've heard today, the flexibility of the tool, it's multifanality whether it's repurposed reuse, whether it's lowering emissions, whether it's creating job opportunities for our veterans and others. The continuation to address the housing crisis that we currently face will take multiple tools to do and the historic tax credit and the preservation reuse of properties is a great example of a way for us to continue to sort of do that. I look forward to any questions we may have as we have time. And again, thank you for participating in being here. Well, thank you. Terrific. I loved some of the phrases use multiple finalities are possible with these, these credits and I think that's well put. I also loved hearing your comments about the important role that that state historic tax credits are playing and helping to reinvest in the future of public housing and giving that a new life. These are incredibly valuable resources at a time of great need for, for housing of all kinds, particularly affordable housing, and, you know, seeing how that is work that is benefited by the, the store tax credits and in places around the country, like Wisconsin or New York or elsewhere so thank you for raising that I think that's an under recognized part of the story here preservation's role in the future of public housing so perhaps we can talk more about that in a minute. So what we're going to do now we've got almost half an hour left so this has worked out well I want to thank the speakers for for their presentations and keeping it short I know there's a lot more each of you could say and what we thought we would do is is chat a little bit more with each of the speakers and then open it up for questions that all of you in the audience may have so if you're thinking of questions you'd like to raise, please put those in the in the q amp a. There's a couple that have come in and we'll get to those here in a minute but give us some more as you're thinking about this but but meanwhile I wanted to just engage with the speakers a bit more about how we can as people who care about preservation about housing about climate, about community about jobs, how we could be more effective in communicating the role that state tax credits play and the potential they have to help address some of these important priority goals that many states have around housing around sustainability and climate. So, let's start and I'll just invite any one of our speakers to participate here so please come off off mute and put your cameras on. I think that that changes and improvements to state HTC's require the support of of legislators, they're the deciders here and so I welcome some thoughts from any of you about what we can do to be most effective when communicating how state tax credits could help address the need for housing and for affordable What are the, what are the things that the message points that you think could resonate most in your experience is anyone want to start. I can start, you know, so we were currently working through an increase in our affordable housing state tax credit here in Wisconsin, but it's, it's one of the messages over and over again is the workforce needs housing to support the jobs that are needed, you know to be filled. And whether it's you're working just on a single affordable credit or a state credit is really key to show projects that were completed and the opportunities that exist within that particular legislators district. So, I mean, time and time again, you know, if you're working within your state. It's, it's really important to know what's going on in each district. We always do it when we say have lobby day we're meeting you know with the various you know representatives. We always have a nice little handout of every project that they can identify so same thing on the state level, you know whether, you know, you're meeting with Democrats or Republicans are going to care about housing, so that you have a workforce that wants to sustain the community. Yeah, I think the power of inspiring examples that are close to home is is not to be underestimated. Other thoughts on how to communicate maybe even overcome some perhaps miss impressions that some folks may have about the role that older buildings and state tax credit incentives could play in addressing housing. Well, I'll just add, you know, I think that john's absolutely right that providing local examples. When you're speaking sort of one on one with the legislator is really important. But generally speaking, having a broad based coalition of supporters for your credit and having you know outreach to partners. I had mentioned we were talking with the, you know, main coalition for affordable housing, they submitted testimony in support of our bill talking with main housing authority who uses our tax credit quite frequently for projects as well as local housing so making sure that you're doing that outreach to those partners. Obviously, one to use it understand but maybe you also need to find those who don't know about it and don't yet see the benefits but get bring them over on to your team. I would also say we would we were doing a lot of the lobbying on the state, just to make sure that everybody's on the same page it could really be like hurting cats. If there's a fringe group that goes rogue and starts confusing, you know the issue with with say let's say like a more organized group to really work together with everyone that's interested in that particular state. And we started talking about you know bump ups and everything for the affordable housing industry. In that particular state, there's a lot of affordable housing developers that don't have the skills that to tackle historic credit. So really working with that group so if they have a credit that they're working on and let's say the preservationists that understand affordable housing started, you know, running a parallel track, you really have to work with the, you know, affordable housing in that particular state, just to make sure again that the messaging is clear. And because if you know I've seen you know multiple different groups coming at a legislative later whether you're a state senator and some women and it could get lost. So that's just my advice there. I think, you know, working both sides of the aisle is important you want to preach the choir but you also want to go into those who may not understand or even maybe again. We don't want to skip individuals simply because they we think they won't support our efforts are having in the past to answer a question that was in the chat around how we overcome some of the stigmas. I think there is a real confusion where people will say, we don't need any more affordable housing in our community. We just need more housing that's affordable. Right, and that sort of distinction of sort of understanding that affordable housing is a general sort of term. Everyone's looking for reasonably priced housing. And if you said hey I'm developing recently priced housing, everyone would be on board with that. But somehow when we mentioned affordable housing, they get some connotation of what's going on and as john said, housing is where the job sleep. Right, that's where the workers sleep. And so in order for have a thriving community we need to have varying levels of housing at varying price point, right, you may need some luxury housing and they need some moderate housing you need some starter homes, these sorts of things. And so we, the House, the historic credit plays an important role in sort of doing that. And so I think the more things we can do the data that the National Trust has collected in this report. The coalition bill that Tara was talking about sort of building those groups. These are all a part of a process. But the one thing I will say is it is a journey. It is not a sprint. And so we have to stay steady and continue to move as things fluctuate politicians come in and out of office console people change. And we have to start all over again, and kind of continue to sort of build those bases. But I think if we have a long term focus, work with others, you can find out you're not alone in this effort. I also wanted to add, you know, sort of regarding that coalition building or idea generation that it's really important for us to do our homework into these other policy areas and understand what affordable housing advocates and other types of advocates are trying to do with their policy initiatives, and then be able to piggyback or draft legislation that corresponds and works with those I think that that's the case for incentives around weatherization and energy efficiency. But also for affordable housing, as I mentioned in the presentation, you know, we have a new law here in the state that is intended to create additional housing right. And so we want to see that happen in existing buildings. And for both, you know, preservation point of view and, you know, climate goals right so we were trying to develop our policy to be responsive to that. Now that's such a good point. It applies to both of these, these areas. Let's, let's maybe turn to the kind of the same question but about sustainability and climate in terms of communicating with elected officials state legislators. What would be some messages there that help could help attract support to bump up a credit or establish a new credit. What would, what would be some of the ways you would communicate about that issue. Well, I'm certainly curious to hear perspectives from folks not as in the climate world as I am because I, my bias is obviously towards caring about decarbonization so for me that's very compelling and I have to constantly remember that other people don't find that necessarily as compelling. I am just struck by I'm wills what was that multiple finalities. I think, and this has just been emphasized multiple times in this conversation. I think really the most compelling point here is that these jurisdictions have all of these goals, some of them are mandated some of you know legislated legislatively mandated goals some of them are social and political goals I mean, you know it's hard to get any policy pass in any jurisdiction right now that is somehow making it harder to afford housing this is just a crisis. And so what what the potential is here for existing building reuse is to bundle all of these different goals that jurisdictions are struggling with and struggling with balancing and maybe perceiving as competing with each other into the realization that actually just reusing our existing buildings period is the way to have these cascading impacts that achieve all of these goals all in one. To me, that is incredibly compelling. I'm not a policymaker, but I'm just I if I take nothing else away from this conversation I think that that is just such a strong case to be made. Right, the two, these two goals are intertwined. So three goals really. Yeah, I mean multiple, you know, affordable housing decarbonization community revitalization job creation equity and you know revitalization of community I mean it's it's everything all in one. So, it isn't. Yeah, I appreciate that and it's inspired to see those connections. Are there conflicts that you all have run into between some of these goals though. When you get into the reality of some of the projects. I mean, every state has their own qualified allocation plan that they're going to award affordable housing credits whether they're 9% or, you know, 4% with a state lie tech and they they're going to want to see the greenest building possible and you're going to score. And so you have to meet those QAP names and there is challenging your challenges with, you know, historic buildings, you know, especially when it comes to, you know, say windows and you know whether you're going to do interior storms and whether you're going to know what the heating system is going to be like, you know, and, you know, how electric or if you can do geothermal or if you can do solar, you know if the inflation reduction act there's there's there's always going to be a little bit of a push and pull with the challenges of an historic building but you know you have to work with the state in their qualified allocation plan in order to try to meet their goal. But you know how in all the states that Gorman is in. You know, are you seeing similarities and within the QAPs for sustainability. So by seeing that shift as you sort of indicated more and more and I think this is what becomes incredibly important about James is sort of comment on getting involved in the QAP right right and really sort of being a part of the discussions and making sure that historic tax credits has a voice at the table. So I think that that becomes incredibly important. It's set up to have conflicts, because you got a limited pot of money that they need to send distribute across wide vast places of land. You got cities urban areas rule that's just Wisconsin right you think about these other places. And so understanding and being able to have data and proof that can show where we sort of fit in with historic tax credits, and why it's I think becomes an incredible tool to sort of utilize again if you got a structure that's already up, and it's there, you've survived or surpassed half the supply chain issues that will come up and trying to build new particularly during cove you you already got a structure right so at least there's some stuff there already. And so there are some different things I think we can do, but QAPs change year to year. So I mean you continue to sort of push in lobby and try to get your sort of piece of the pie in, but every state community at least that I've seen has some vacant underutilized building that they don't know what to do with. And so historic tax credits can be an important tool and so to utilizing that, not just the impact COVID has had just on supply chains and others, but on how we now work. This meeting would not be possible we don't have COVID we probably all together somewhere having this meeting. So people aren't going back downtown to their main streets in the office buildings as much as they used to. So they got vacant floors and units there storefronts. All these things need to be reimagined and the historic credit in a lot of ways is the is the tool to help that reimagine start to make progress. I just want to jump in and quickly. I know a question came into the chat to about that kind of conflict of D carb versus preservation. And I think I mean will I think just touched on it through a different lens that I think we're as we move forward with this changing policy landscape through all these different lenses I think we are going to have to maybe reimagine somewhat our relationship with and our approach to preservation in some cases but I also think from a bigger picture perspective. The number of buildings that that is going to become a serious issue is very small compared to the number of buildings that are in need of or great candidates for reuse. And then another point that I just think is incredibly important for everyone to think about when we're talking about affordable housing. It is in my opinion it should be almost criminal to not have highly efficient solar powered or some other renewable affordable housing, because utility bills and energy cost burden is one of the single most challenging financial aspects of living in poverty which, or even not poverty technically which many many many of us are so affordable housing has to be coupled, in my opinion with these efficiency and D carb measure simply because that is the only way to really be supporting our, our community members and citizens, actively and reasonably. No, it's such a good point. Yeah. Thank you guys I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Shaw, who's been looking at the Q&A that's been coming in and we won't be able to touch on all of these but show if you want to jump in and maybe highlight a couple of other questions and threads here that we try to touch on in the last 12 minutes or so here. Great. A lot of a lot of good questions on a wide range of issues and I'll try to pick those that where we haven't touched on. Sarah in Colorado asks about working with with different state agencies other than than the ones that administer the state historic tax credits. I thought that the panelists could bring some interesting perspectives on working with different agencies outside the mainstream whether that's Department of Energy or Veterans Affairs at the federal level, for example, what anybody has anybody worked directly with Department of State Departments of Energy. I have not. But in one sort of related to that question one thing I have seen is we do sometimes run into conflicting rules from SHIPAA versus a finance agency and what they're requiring. In those cases, it really takes pulling those teams together. All these agencies are all trying to sort of lay out the best possible path forward. But in some cases, an historic feature and what a finance agency requires in a rehab are sometimes two different things and conflicting. We have to sort of make sure we line those up and in those cases, SHIPAA got on the call with the local finance agency, they all talk came to a conclusion, agreed, and things sort of move forward. So we have to sort of look at that Department of Energy's and those things only way I've worked with them is really in programs that they were administering to ensure that we had energy efficient features and things like that it hasn't really been another any other capacity outside I would just say, you know, anytime we're doing a project in Wisconsin, there's a group called Focus on Energy, and for doing any type of, you know, green upgrades, they provide dollars soft dollars in order to help us. And, you know, Maryland Department of the Environment had a great voluntary cleanup program, and we used the voluntary cleanup program at National Park Seminary, and we're able to do some creative financing in order to, you know, clean up some environmental contamination that was on the ground so a lot of times we will check, you know, with the environmental state agencies to see what kind of brownfield cleanup funds there are. And then you can help with your SHPO offices, which leads to another good question from Cindy Naskie about the SHPO's ability to either either modify regulation or provide guidance, as opposed to going through the legislative path. Have you folks worked with the SHPO to enact changes without having to go through legislatures? I would say, and John, if I speak a little more on this as well, there is, I don't know about issuing sort of legislative changes, but they do have quite a bit of flexibility in so what they're doing. And I've seen even this difference in state to state, where we've done something in Phoenix that was okay, but in another state there were some challenges with exact same sort of maneuver. So they do have some flexibility in how you work. And I think what I have found is it really is explaining them, talking with them about the project, what your goals are and so forth, and really allowing them to be, to help you sort of guide through. And they're not at least in my experience, and John can maybe speak this as well, they have not been the, oh no, you can't get this done group. They are really there to try to help you get through the process to really sort of ensure that your project has smooth sailing going forward. And in that they've been an incredible partner in thinking through strategically, where we have run into little speed bumps or blocks, and help come up with creative strategies and how we can continue to meet the intent of the rule. And providing the, you know, critical housing that's needed in the communities we work at. Right. And I would just say that like in Wisconsin, our show always took kind of the point of view if, if you can get a bill like a developer through a project, hopefully they'll do 10 more so you can get more and more projects done. But they don't really take an academic, overly academic type of approach, where they're going to be sticklers on just non non real substantive issues. And so, you know, if there's a good show, we will like to do more and more business, you know, in that state and I, I mean, it's not just with content. So, generally, they want to see buildings get done. Yeah. Good question from our colleague Adrian out in California, just picking up on a thread that we've touched on a little bit here on office vacancies. And, and the focus on office vacancies as a as a new potential for housing and what states have been thinking in terms of incentivizing those transitions. So, perhaps, folks could talk about the inherent challenges with that and opportunities. And if they're, if you're familiar with any state legislation that's suggesting an incentive like that. So again, I can go briefly. So the city of Chicago had seen a sort of mass exodus for a number of reasons from from their downtown financial districts. One, there was a shift of where the sort of main focus and employers wanted to be from sort of the financial district to what is Fulton market or west of the city or now what is called the West Loop. And so the banks, BMO Harris, JP Mark, all built new offices in this Fulton market and left sort of this old financial district, which left a ton of sort of vacant buildings as you can imagine. What the city did under Mayor Lightfoot was commissioned an RFP to really incentivize developers and others with a stack of things to store credits and tip and a bunch of other things to try to do what they could to incentivize developers to come in and sort of help reimagine what those properties could sort of look like. It's very early on now they've selected their first set of developers. And so everyone's sort of keeping an eye on on on what's happening here. And so you can imagine these are very old bank buildings with large lobbies and these sorts of things that create some challenges and reuse. But we're seeing the first sort of round of that. The other one was in a retail district on Michigan Avenue, where there's been again because of online shopping things of real exodus of retailers. And so the city came up, created its own in an RFQ brought in architects and others. And so we'll see how that goes, but they're incentivizing it with dollars, waving a fees and those sorts of things to try to get the most creative minds to sort of help them think through how they can reimagine these now once critical areas. How do we sort of reimagine that for a future going forward. You know, just to jump in there, you know, the, the model that the Carolinas offer when it comes to mill buildings and incentivizing adaptive reuse and mill buildings in North and South Carolina those have been powerful incentives for that building type of which there are many examples that office, the office tower, the post or office tower perhaps even maybe that that building type for a lot of communities going forward here so it'd be great to see one of our states pick that up and try that you know maybe California Adrian could pioneer that I think a lot of cities last dates are looking for that for some strategies there and that this is one that's got potential I think. I was just going to say, yeah, Chicago's got a, you know, a great example of what they're doing with that old financial district also we've seen opportunities in Atlanta. You know, particularly on peach tree there was an RFP that was just out on conversion of, you know, mid century sky, you know, skyscraper that would be converted that they want to see affordable housing in and I think that we'll see that in more cities. There's a lot to come on that conversion process, and especially mid century buildings. Just just real quick, I think one of the challenges for cities is as these districts become more populated by people and families. The question is, where's the schools, you know, some of the other sort of amenities and things that come around the neighborhood, the financial district wasn't built, you know, for schools and they can you know that sort of thing so it's still a challenge then and cities are trying to think across country. How do you sort of once it gets populated, then you know what are the other things that are needed to sort of create a comprehensive. Combining a few questions. I'll direct this one today to Tara perhaps to kick off the conversation on a lot of the projects that were featured were large projects. We've had a few questions about ways that programs are supporting smaller projects under 5 million. The main program does a good job of that. But tacking on another element to that question, simplifying the application process for those for those single time users of the credit. We have to hire a store preservation consultant to get through the process. Maybe you can kick off that part of the discussion. Sure. So yeah, I had to present rather quickly so couldn't get into the details but you know main has our state substantial credit that is for property and some producing properties that pair with the federal credit and then we have our small credit. And as it currently is the max on QRE is $250,000. So it's just really not enough money to do anything and to hire a consultant and to go through the application process so it's only been used 14 times since 2009. And that's why our policy is our legislation proposes that we increase that cap to a million dollars and also increase the base credit and the booster for affordable housing so that it comes a bit closer to what it would look like if you took the federal credit and the state credit. So, you know, that's just kind of the way we're we're trying to meet that issue because, you know, the, it's hard to get the federal, it's hard to get the substantial credit without a big enough project to get federal investment in that credit. So that's how we're trying to kind of bridge that gap for our small credit and you can find that information about that program on the main historic preservation commission website. And as it goes for applications, you know, we're trying to make the dollars work so it does make sense to hire people to work through it with you. But for on the homeowner side, the, the idea is through rulemaking to have that be much simpler and for us to provide technical assistance to individual homeowners so that they can go through the process relatively easily. We've got many questions for this excellent panel, but unfortunately we've come to just about the end of our time. So I will turn it back over to Renee, are you wrapping us up. So, thank you, Sean. Thank you, Jim. And I want to thank all of our panelists we know we gave you a short amount of time to convey a lot of information and so I wouldn't surprise me if you get a lot of follow up questions and conversations. And we know that this type of conversation is just the first step additional ideas out there, and we're going to continue conversing with not only the panelists but those folks who were kind enough to give us our time and each of you as well. So, next slide. I wanted to invite you to join our upcoming webinar series, everything you wanted to know about saving historic places but we're afraid to ask, which is a great title for a series. Wanted to let you know if you aren't a form member, I urge you to become a form member so that you can join this particular series as it is going to be a form only form member only webinar series so I hope you will consider joining. I think each of you for joining us today. I love state historic tax credits I think the panelists all enjoy this type of incentive. And we hope that this has given you some of the tools to make great strides in your own states. So thank you all for joining us and thank you again for speaking to me. Bye.