Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

ACHP Chair Sara Bronin, ACHP staff, and members in Washington, D.C. for the ACHP’s summer business meeting traveled across the Anacostia River July 17 for a tour of a historic site with a storied past. The former site of the first federal mental health hospital for members of the armed forces and District of Columbia residents, the Government Hospital for the Insane, is now known as St. Elizabeths after the tract of land on which it was constructed.

ACHP members met July 18 in Washington, DC, for their summer business meeting. Chair Sara Bronin welcomed the three newest appointed members: Erica Avrami, Amelia Marshand, and Jane Woodfin to the meeting. It was also the first meeting attended by governor member Gov. John Carney of Delaware and newly appointed Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin.

Members voted to send letters to Congress in support of an increase in appropriations and reauthorization of the Historic Preservation Fund; support for the HTC-GO Act involving housing and climate-related tax credits; and offering modified language to the National Defense Authorization Act. They also voted to re-convene a digital information task force.

On July 8, The San Diego Union-Tribune published an op-ed by ACHP Chair Sara Bronin in which she lays out how adaptive reuse of historic buildings can help ease California’s housing crisis.

Bronin writes: “Given the magnitude of the housing shortage, we’ll need an all-hands-on-deck approach. I’m optimistic about California and its largest cities making meaningful progress in advancing policies that make the most of its existing building stock.”

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision in the case of Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo (Loper). That decision overturned the long-standing Chevron doctrine, under which courts would defer to permissible agency interpretations of ambiguities in the statutes those agencies administered. After Loper, courts will exercise their independent judgment and use traditional tools of statutory construction to resolve statutory ambiguities, without deferring to an agency interpretation of the law.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO), and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have executed a Nationwide Programmatic Agreement (NPA) that will make it easier to maintain, repair, and upgrade their historic facilities to better address climate resiliency and sustainability.