Henson is president of the Talmadge Historical Society and lives in Talmadge. Hueter is the chair of Neighbors For A Better San Diego and lives in Talmadge.
A recent opinion commentary in The San Diego Union-Tribune about the nomination of the Talmadge Park Estates Historic District to the National of Historic Places clearly demonstrates the need for a more complete understanding of historic preservation and its role in planning San Diego’s future.
A frequent argument against historic districts is that historic designation prevents development. This is simply false. State law allows all homeowners in the Talmadge historic district to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in their backyards, and historic designation does not prohibit the future construction of those backyard units.
Historic designation simply manages how changes are made to properties and ensures that new construction is compatible with the existing structure and surrounding buildings. This concept is key to the architectural principles of “Missing Middle Housing” and San Diego’s City of Villages, which are being disregarded by the city in current planning initiatives.
The use of objective design standards is a hallmark of all recent state infill housing laws, including ADUs, Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 10. But instead of embracing these standards, San Diego’s policymakers have written them out of our municipal code. Good design is a positive feature of infill development, not just for historic districts, but for all San Diego neighborhoods.
A recent report by the city of San Diego’s independent budget analyst confirms that historic preservation and adaptive reuse (preservation of the exterior of a historic while making the interior functional for a modern purpose) create attractive community centers and are important tools for community revitalization and economic development. But our city’s current regulations lack clear guidelines and incentives for adaptive reuse, consistent with the Urban Design Element of San Diego’s General Plan, which causes lengthy appeals and litigation.
We should follow the lead of Southern California cities by using meaningful adaptive reuse policies that merge the interests of developers and preservationists, rather than pitting them against each other, as San Diego now does. Los Angeles, in particular, credits its adaptive reuse program for the creation of more than 12,000 homes.
Another frequent objection to historic districts is the prevalence of discriminatory deed restrictions, which Shelley v. Kraemer made illegal in 1948, and lending practices that were legal nationwide until age of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Residents of Talmadge acknowledge the lasting negative impact of “redlining” and other discriminatory lending practices on racial disparities in housing outcomes.
But past discrimination does not justify eliminating all historic preservation.
It’s easy to chastise Franklin Roosevelt and the America of the 1930s for the racism of the home loan lending maps, but it’s a lot harder for people to see how our City Council has ensured those same outcomes today by approving the off-siting (segregating) of affordable housing in Complete Communities projects as part of Mayor Todd Gloria’s recently adopted Housing Action Package (HAP 2.0).
Our policymakers have also reduced our already limited stock of for-sale housing by allowing developers and their investors to convert owner-occupied homes into ADU apartment complexes and short-term vacation rentals. The use of progressive buzzwords can’t hide the damage done by misguided planning policies that will in fact increase — not reduce — racial disparities in housing.
Creating a historic district requires significant research. The creation of the Talmadge Park Estates Historic District is the culmination of more than 20 years of community effort, starting with the local designation of the Talmadge Gates Historic District in 2000, the creation of a maintenance assessment district to fund community improvements, and restoration of the historic lights and gates that provide a unifying element to the district. (Democrat state Sen. Toni Atkins attended the ribbon cutting for the restored gates in 2018.)
Talmadge residents had the collective time and resources to make these improvements and guide the district through a rigorous two-year national nomination process. Indeed, the failing here is that despite keeping application fees affordable as part of revisions to the Historic Resources Code and Mills Act in 2008, San Diego’s pipeline of historic districts, which has been stalled since 2018, does not include candidates in underserved communities. One of the objectives of the Talmadge effort was to create an app that will help other neighborhoods catalog their potential historic resources. We look forward to sharing this platform with our neighboring communities in City Heights, Southeast San Diego and throughout the city.
