A state tax credit program not only helped John Fitzpatrick rescue a historic home. It convinced him to help fix up the West River neighborhood — and to lobby state legislators to save the tax credits.
The tax program is threatened with extinction in current state budget negotiations. That raises the prospect of fewer owner-occupiers like Fitzpatrick moving in and investing themselves in historic houses and reviving neighborhoods.
A year after the Connecticut Historic Homes Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program provided Fitzpatrick (pictured) with approximately $10,000 savings on a $50,000 exterior restoration of his 1865 Victorian beauty on Chapel Street, a woman was killed by a stray bullet three blocks away.
“I realized,” he said, “that my responsibility extended beyond my front door … across the street, down the whole block.”
Result: Fitzpatrick has become a community activist. He founded the Chapel-Ellsworth Block Group. (He doesn’t like the term “block watch.”) He has taken the lead in a greenspace program that planted five trees along Chapel and last month beautified Monitor Square. And he tweets daily on the doings, good and sometimes not so good, in his West River neighborhood.
It all started with gutter replacement, new slate tiles on a Mansard roof, and five new Azek brackets.
If your home is on the state or national registry of historic structures or is in a historic district, the tax credit program can save approximately 20 to 30 percent of the cost of the work done. The three-family Fitzpatrick bought in 2003 was not on the list. But he had the historical research done; the house was accepted, and he proceeded.
After an owner gets approval from the state for the work under the program, he has to come up with his own money to do the work. Upon proof of completion, he takes the credit off his taxes or receives a cash payment.
Fitzpatrick said the payment process could be long, but it was well worth it. And each credit laid, the basis for the next phase of his restoration.
From 2000 through 2008, of the 291 projects covered by the tax credit program, 138, or 48 percent, had in New Haven zip codes, according to New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon, who supports Fitzpatrick’s quest..
“And many folks,” she added, “in the Westville/Ward 25 area have done preliminary planning but have not applied, so they are not included in those numbers.”
She said the program is essential to saving housing stock not in elite areas but in historic and transitional ones, where the “financials, or location, would not support construction otherwise.”
Fitzpatrick’s experience bears that out. He liked the program so much, in fact, he wrote to the entire New Haven state delegation. He personally lobbied Dillon about it at a West River community barbecue earlier this year at the beginning of the state budget process, using his experience as Exhibit A.
Since purchasing the house in 2003, Fitzpatrick put in about $100,000. Between the tax credit program, the Yale homebuyer program and the rent he collects on the two floor-through apartments above where he lives, he’s broken even.
Click here for an article by Dillon comparing the film credit with the historic home tax credit.
While the eight-year cost of the historic structure tax credit cost the state $4.8 million, she wrote, the projects generated $20 million in work, many for small, local contractors.
Historic Restoration Doesn’t Come Cheap
Fitzpatrick next needs next to fix the dormers right, for $10,000; remodel three kitchens and three bathrooms, $50,000; paint, $33,000, and restore the now absent wrap-around porch, which he verified in the 1879 map of the area. That would be $40,000.
Historic restoration doesn’t come cheap. He could repaint without scraping every inch clean for less than half the estimate. “More than one contractor,” he recollected, “said, ‘Take it [the mansard roof] off.’” The contractor meant replace it with a kind of vinyl siding and be done. “But I couldn’t do that.”
Fitzpatrick did it right, custom milling the new parts. For the crown moulding and the replacement of five brackets he used a product called Azek, a custom plastic that resists moisture and aging. It was approved by the historic preservation and museum division of the Commission on Culture and Tourism, which administers the tax credit project.
Fitzpatrick said that on his block of Chapel, between Ellsworth and the Ella Grasso Boulevard, only three of some 12 houses are owner-occupied. Restoration work of this kind may attract more owner-occupiers, as well as attentive and community minded tenants, he suggested.
“If the historic homes tax credit program is suspended,” he said, the equation that makes the restorations possible “will change, and it may not be financially prudent to continue with the rehab.”
“This has been very rewarding,” he said. “I never knew the neighborhood. Now I see there are people both willing to take the initiative and to join the effort.” He posts twice daily on Twitter with updates on the status of West River.
Fitzpatrick is no longer working at the neuroscience labs at Yale Medical School that employed him during the renovation work; he is looking for a new job. Even with the tax credit restored, no new historic rehab is going to take place until he lands one.
As to the legislation, CGS 10 – 416, which established the tax credit rehab program, State Rep. Dillon wrote that it has been suspended in the governor’s proposed new budget. The Democratic budget retains it.
Karen Senich, the director of the state’s Commission on Culture and Tourism, which administers the program, characterized it this way: “The program is significant because it’s urban revitalization, preservation, smart growth, and it creates jobs. A very successful program.”