Historic Preservation Coast to Coast: An Introduction
What to do with an old building?
Every city is different. Different geography, different populations, different wants and needs. Housing, however, is a universal need in cities. How can governments (federal, state, and local), businesses, and organizations ensure that people have access to housing? What resources are already available? Cities all have old buildings that have outlived their original purpose. Sometimes this can be old office buildings that can be repurposed as apartments, or old single family homes blocking the development of denser housing a city desperately needs. Every city is different, though, so potential solutions and failures can look very different. What follows are case studies looking at how three cities in America, from the East Coast to the West, have made use of the resource of historic buildings to address housing inequality. Following the case studies, this project will look at how historic preservation can be leveraged to benefit everyone along with some practical programming at the federal and state level designed with these goals in mind. First up, a look at how inflexible historic preservation can be a barrier to creating necessary housing.