San Mateo Homeowners Seek Historic Tag for Housing Exemption

Some Bay Area neighborhoods that have historically resisted efforts to develop high-density housing in their enclaves now are embracing history as an end-run around a new state law that allows homeowners to build up to four residential units on a single-family lot.

A group of homeowners in one of San Mateo’s wealthiest neighborhoods has filed an application with the State Historical Resources Commission for designation as an historic district, which would exempt the upscale subdivision from California’s SB9 regulation.

The campaign to create a Baywood historic district in a leafy neighborhood populated by Spanish Revival-style homes with tile roofs, fruit trees and hydrangea bushes has divided the Peninsula city into two camps, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A group calling itself the San Mateo Heritage Alliance has indicated that if it succeeds in getting the state commission to accept Baywood as an historic district, it may seek historic designations for neighborhoods across central San Mateo, including the Central, North Central, Aragon, Hayward Park and San Mateo Park neighborhoods, the report said.

Meanwhile, yellow signs declaring “No Baywood Historic District” also are popping up on front yards in Baywood. The signs promote a website called lessredtape.com.

City officials, who apparently did not authorize the application from Baywood before it was filed with the state agency, appear to be lining up against the proposal.

“Allowing a group of unelected individuals, that don’t necessarily live in the neighborhood, to impose a blanket historic designation that comes with additional red tape and costs is deeply concerning,” San Mateo Mayor Amourence Lee told the Chronicle.

San Mateo Planning Commissioner Seema Patel, who opposes the historic district designation, said the designation could kill efforts to increase housing designation in some of the city’s most walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods, the newspaper report said.

According to the report, the kerfuffle over the historic designation was touched off when someone who bought a Spanish Revival home dating to 1933 filed plans to demolish the existing building and replace it with a larger house and an accessory dwelling unit commonly known as a Granny flat.

Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor who is an expert on California housing law, called the use of historic districts to limit the application of SB9 “a gaping loophole.”

“SB9′s historic exemption is really broad and local bodies have treated it as an invitation to exempt whatever they want to exempt,” Elmendorf told the Chronicle, adding that it is easier to designate an entire district than an individual property, simply by “drawing lines on a map.”