Historic Tax Credit Program Faces 10-Year Review: Feds Must Report on Bottlenecks for Affordable Housing

This piece of legislation directs the Secretary of the Interior to compile a massive report for Congress within one year. The goal is simple: figure out what’s working—and what’s definitely not—with the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program, specifically when it comes to creating affordable housing.

The Bureaucracy Deep Dive: 10 Years of Paperwork

Think of the Historic Preservation Tax Incentives as the money that helps developers turn that beautiful but crumbling old factory or schoolhouse into something useful again. The National Park Service (NPS) oversees the rules, called the Standards for Rehabilitation. This bill demands a forensic audit of the last decade of NPS’s process.

If you’re a developer trying to convert a historic building into apartments, the biggest headache is often the wait. This report will finally put numbers to that pain. The NPS must detail the average processing time for applications—from the moment the State Historic Preservation Office gets the paperwork to the final approval or denial. They have to break this down by project size and type, shining a light on where the biggest bottlenecks are hiding in the system.

They also have to track the statistics that tell the story of regulatory friction: how many applications received “hold notices,” how many were denied outright, and how many had conditions placed on them before approval. This is the government being forced to hold up a mirror to its own efficiency, or lack thereof, in managing a program crucial for urban renewal and housing.

Converting Old Buildings into New Homes

The most important part of this bill for everyday people is the focus on affordable housing. Right now, developers often struggle to meet both the strict historic preservation rules and the economic realities of building affordable units. The Secretary must recommend specific improvements to the Standards for Rehabilitation to make it easier to convert non-residential historic buildings into housing.

This isn't just about making the rules easier; it's about making them smarter. The report needs to look at updating guidance for modern necessities—like adding energy-efficiency upgrades, ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities (ADA compliance), and cleaning up environmental hazards often found in old industrial sites. For the average renter, this could mean the difference between a historic building sitting empty and that same building offering dozens of new, energy-efficient apartments.

The Struggle to Keep Guidance Current

Finally, the bill forces the NPS to explain how they gather and use feedback from the people actually using the program—the developers, the state reviewers, and the preservationists. They have to detail the most common problems users run into when trying to create affordable housing. Crucially, they must also explain whether they lack the resources to keep their guidance documents—the bulletins and tax-incentive guides—current.

This is a nod to the reality that regulations often move slower than the market. The report has to offer future recommendations on how to update the Standards to address affordable housing needs, protect historic properties from climate risks (think flood resilience or extreme heat), and ensure the rules are based on what is actually “economically and technically realistic.” In short, this bill is less about changing the rules right now and more about gathering the hard data needed to fix a complex program that’s supposed to be helping build housing but might be getting bogged down in its own red tape.