Preservation Maryland and its Campaign for Historic Trades have introduced legislation to establish a preservation craft training center that was included in the year-end government spending bill, which is expected to be signed by President Biden shortly. The Frederick Jobs and Historic Preservation Training Center Land Acquisition Act “provides the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Training Center, located in Frederick, Maryland, with the

congressional authority to acquire up to 20 acres to build out a fully functioning center for historic trades training.”

Read our report on the Status of Historic Trades, commissioned by the Campaign for Historic Trades to help make the case for historic trades training, here. 

Susanne Schindler and Chris Moyer take a deep dive into the world of public housing for Places Journal in their article “The Case for Truly Public Housing.” The authors consider how the Cambridge Public Housing Authority has managed to provide quality public housing despite the increasing privatization of affordable housing and erosion of The Housing Act of 1937. 

Speaking of public housing, Emory University students, with the help of their professor, worked to commemorate the two first federally-funded public housing complexes which happen to be located in Atlanta.

Digging into the issue of affordability, we came across this study from 2019 conducted by researchers from the USC Price Center for Social Innovation looked at rent burdens in LA through a resident survey, finding that 73% of the 800 households surveyed were rent burdened.

In Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, a pilot ordinance will require developers to pay a $15,000 fee to tear down existing buildings in an effort to protect existing affordable housing units. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, whose district includes Logan Square, says this will help protect missing middle housing that might otherwise be demolished to create larger, more expensive units, a trend that’s been increasing in the area.

Bloomberg covers a study from the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability considered “green gentrification” and found links between green infrastructure developments and gentrification in major US and European cities. The original research paper can be found here.

A new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania looks at the connection between gun violence and vacant or abandoned housing, finding that restoration reduces gun violence.

According to the AIA via Bloomberg, building renovation tipped the scales accounting for more than 50% of architecture firm billings for the first time ever.

This piece in Storeys looks at how adaptive reuse in Canada has been slow to catch on and considers the potential of converting office buildings to housing in the future.

Smaller but mighty: Grand Rapids is pulling its weight when it comes to adding housing units through creative adaptive reuse!