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The problem with San Diego's historic neighborhoods
I’m the homeowner quoted in the article as saying the legalities of neighborhood historic designation are complex, and recommending that residents who want to fight a historic designation hire a property or land use attorney. (I am neither, and no, this isn’t a plug for legal services.) Due to space limitations for comments, I offer one example of the legal complexities I was referring to. City staff told the City Council, “the Municipal Code does not require the property owner’s consent to designate a historical resource.” In other words, in their opinion, the consent of the governed didn’t matter. But this hardline position – that public sentiment wasn’t a governing criterion – was in disconnect with the reality on the ground in South Park. Shouldn’t a historic district be something that everybody in the neighborhood wants, not just a few vocal true believers? The proposed South Park historic district implicated a residential neighborhood comprising 395 separately owned properties – a neighborhood where the home is probably the owner’s primary residence, where the home may be the owner’s single biggest investment, where the owner may have poured his life savings into the property, and where owner may have owned the property for decades before the neighborhood was designated “historic.” Under those circumstances, shouldn’t the level of support for a historic district matter? Shouldn’t it matter that there was so little support for the district in South Park? In the case of South Park, 64% of the property owners didn’t return ballots, and just 27% of homeowners – 105 properties out of 395 properties – returned ballots expressing support for a historic district. Considering all the time that the true believers – SOHO and David Swarens (who chaired the Greater Golden Hill Planning Committee and served on the SOHO board) and his group – had to mobilize their supporters to mail in “yes” ballots favoring a historic district, and considering how well organized they were, if there actually was a groundswell of support among South Park homeowners for a historic district, shouldn’t SOHO and Mr. Swarens have been able to come up with a higher level of support than just 27% (105) of all of the South Park property owners (395)? In the absence of numerically widespread support, shouldn’t the city have held off approving the South Park historic district?— November 20, 2018 12:23 p.m.