RFP Staff
♦ From 1998 until the end of 2014, a state tax credit of 30% for qualifying rehabilitations of non income-producing historic structures existed. It specifically included owner-occupied personal residences, for which no equivalent federal credit existed. This overly generous tax credit was overlooked by many, since it doesn’t provide huge benefits to wealthy investors to the same degree as the commercial and mill tax credits. But North Carolina provided one of the fattest state tax credits in the nation and became a virtual mecca for Itinerant Carpenters from Kentucky, South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, and Florida.
Itinerant Carpenters are highly skilled and specialized craftsmen who buy neglected “historic” homes in distressed neighborhoods; occupy them to avail themselves of the tax credits for historic rehabilitation; fix them up; then “flip” them; and move on to the next owner-occupied renovation project. Itinerant Carpenters have flocked to North Carolina in droves since 1998, making it a top destination for these tradesmen who can live off the fat of their blue collar neighbors who pay the taxes that finance their largesse.
What have the Itinerant Carpenters brought to the Old North State along with their over-compensated skills? Many of their neighbors in North Carolina cities believe they’ve brought with them the attitude that due to their “contribution” to the blighted neighborhoods they’ve helped gentrify, they get to tell their neighbors how to live. Many neighbors in these distressed neighborhoods believe their mushrooming increase in property values has driven their taxes beyond what they can afford. And when the Itinerant Carpenter class moves into the neighborhood, along with them comes “forced gentrification”, enabling the Itinerant Carpenters to maximize their own profits at the expense of long-term residents—often elderly minorities living in poverty.
Out-of-state Itinerant Carpenters live a Country Club lifestyle at Trailer Court prices. Quite often itinerant carpenters become ‘community organizers’ promoting glorious visions like ‘quality of life’, while plotting to gentrify the neighborhood in order to remake it in their own image. They fancy themselves as the educated, ‘progressive’ voice of the State whose generous government pads their bank accounts.
Some elected officials saw the 4,000 recent signatures gathered by the lobbying efforts of NC Governor Pat McCrory and his Secretary of Cultural Resources Susan Kluttz. A closer look reveals many of those signatures came from itinerant carpenters who depend on the Historic Preservation State Tax Credit. Many of the loudest voices demanding the state handout are itinerant carpenters who see their gravy train ending. If the tax credit is not restored, they’ll be leaving the State in droves, to find the next most-generous handouts available.
In order to provide relocation assistance for NC’s soon-to-be displaced Itinerant Carpenters and Neighborhood Gentrifiers, the RFP is providing a link to how you can find fresh “fat” elsewhere and how you can locate investors to whom you can transfer your owner-occupied tax credits, in order to fatten income:
http://www.ncshpo.org/State-Tax-Credits-Report%202013.pdf
And if you’re looking for greener pastures that simply can’t be found in North Carolina any longer, may we suggest Kentucky and Indiana? They have far more generous handouts than the Old North State. As for your former neighbors in North Carolina, your neighborhood activism will not be missed. You harmed a lot of your neighbors.
