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Gene Alston bought a home on Fairfax Avenue in Baywood, a small neighborhood in San Mateo, California, three years ago. His family moved in a couple months later, but the house had more issues than he was aware of, and after discussing with his architect, Alston decided it made more sense to tear it down and rebuild rather than remodel. The plan was to build a larger home in its place with an accessory dwelling unit for his mother-in-law. Alston learned that among other things, a historic review was required; to his relief, it turned out that the property was not considered historical<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But later that year, the enmity began.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some in the neighborhood appeared unhappy. Emails and flyers went around, Alston said. It was multifaceted. Some people didn\u2019t agree with the finding that his home wasn\u2019t historical, while others didn\u2019t think his family should have an accessory dwelling unit (or ADU). Some objected to the proposed design or style of the Alston family home. It didn\u2019t matter that he\u2019d just paid about $2.8 million for his home in the neighborhood, per an estimate<\/a>, and he owns it. Members of the newly formed San Mateo Heritage Alliance and the Baywood Neighborhood Association, whose president is Michael Nash, husband of San Mateo Mayor Lisa Diaz Nash, were among the opposition, Alston said. (Michael Nash is a former San Mateo Heritage Alliance Board member, and Mayor Lisa Diaz Nash is listed as a vice president on the Baywood Neighborhood Association board, however she has recused herself<\/a> on all things related to the matter.)<\/p>\n After several meetings and phone calls, multiple applications, thousands of dollars, and anonymous complaints, Alston\u2019s plan was approved in 2022 and demolition began last year. But that hasn\u2019t stopped his neighbors. The San Mateo Heritage Alliance, which seems to be an opulent homeowners\u2019 clique, was founded in 2022. Toward the end of last year, it filed an application<\/a> to the State Historical Resources Commission to turn their neighborhood into a historic district, which would make remodeling and building in the neighborhood much more difficult, time consuming, and costly, at the very least.<\/p>\n More recently, in late February, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors had a chance to weigh in on the matter and ultimately opted out\u2014although it was always completely in the hands of the Office of Historic Preservation.<\/p>\n Alston doesn\u2019t want to definitively say there\u2019s a racial factor, but as someone who is Black and Korean, he\u2019s begun to wonder why some of his neighbors are going to such lengths, when there were other demolitions, when his home wasn\u2019t deemed historic, when other homes have floor- area ratios that exceed his. \u201cYou kind of have to ask, well, what went into them saying this house was the one that they should oppose?\u201d Alston said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Baywood is lined with beautiful, pre-war style homes. It sits in Silicon Valley\u2019s backyard and is unsurprisingly an affluent neighborhood in the Bay Area, with home values ranging anywhere from $2 million to $5 million dollars. It\u2019s not the first affluent neighborhood in California, let alone the Bay Area, to oppose change in their predominantly single-family-home towns, and it won\u2019t be the last. There are several pieces of recent and past legislation in California meant to streamline and spur development in hopes of mending a severe housing crisis<\/a>. In some cases, they are weaponized by wealthy, resourceful homeowners to block new housing from being built. What Baywood is doing is no different, and it seems to have all begun with one new home , and maybe the fear that more change, and more development, would follow. There are carve outs for historic preservation sometimes, and the neighborhood is using that to their benefit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sham,\u201d Jordan Grimes, a San Francisco Peninsula housing advocate who was born and raised in San Mateo, said. \u201cIt is a pretty nakedly transparent effort at this point, and an exploitation of this exemption in state housing laws for true historic preservation, in an attempt to prevent new housing growth in one of San Mateo\u2019s most exclusive and exclusionary neighborhoods.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n On the San Mateo Heritage Alliance\u2019s website, under its frequently asked questions<\/a> section about turning Baywood into a historic district, there\u2019s no explicit mention of the housing law (or laws) it\u2019s hoping to skirt. Although we can assume it is referring to SB 9 (a senate bill that made it possible to build up to four homes where only a single-family home once was) when it says, \u201cyour next door neighbor can at their discretion, without your knowledge, demolish their historic home and erect a 4-unit apartment building next to you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the San Mateo Heritage Alliance went on to claim that a historic district designation would protect property rights and equate to higher property values\u2014this time, explicitly mentioning multifamily development. \u201cWithout designation, new state housing laws will do away with routine city review and your right to express your views or comment on multifamily construction in your single family neighborhood,\u201d the website reads.<\/p>\n In an opinion piece<\/a> for the San Mateo Daily Journal titled, \u201cMaking a case for historic districts,\u201d the San Mateo Heritage Alliance\u2019s president Laurie Hietter wrote that Baywood hasn\u2019t changed much over the last century. She and her husband bought their home in the \u201890s, she wrote, and \u201ccarefully renovated it without affecting its historic character.\u201d So renovation was acceptable in this case, it seems. But it\u2019s \u201cthe continual unnecessary loss of beautiful homes\u201d driving her support of Baywood becoming a historic district, Hietter wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not about historic preservation for them, it\u2019s about stopping what they believe to be incompatible development, or multifamily development\u2014that we know is more likely to be inhabited by people who have lower incomes and people of color,\u201d Grimes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The San Mateo Heritage Alliance did not respond to Fortune\u2019s<\/em> request for comment. Michael Nash of the Baywood Neighborhood Association said it \u201cis not taking a position on this issue. Our members have asked us for information to educate them on the topic. We are providing that in cooperation with the City.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mayor Lisa Diaz Nash did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for San Mateo, in regards to a supposed partnership, said it \u201cengages actively with all neighborhood associations, to inform them of important citywide updates that impact their communities and gain feedback from them on potential City-driven initiatives to ensure their community\u2019s voices are heard.\u201d<\/p>\n When wealthier neighborhoods request historic designation, it seems as if they\u2019re doing so to protect the status quo, Sheri Bonstelle, a partner at Jeffer Mangels and land-use attorney, said. \u201cI love historic preservation,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it\u2019s not necessary, typically, to protect beautiful homes and wealthy suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s particularly off-putting is that California has a housing crisis and everyone knows it; the state needs more homes, it\u2019s as simple as that. And after decades of failed policy that fueled an inability and refusal to build, the waves of legislation that have been passed in recent years to allow development in predominantly single-family home neighborhoods haven\u2019t solved the problem. Part of it is because of highly intelligent, rich homeowners; they\u2019re against change, whether that be the addition of multifamily development in their neighborhood or something else. Sometimes it\u2019s the rich and famous, from Steph Curry to Marc Andreessen, against multifamily development<\/a>, in their case, in Atherton (the most expensive zip code in the country). Or maybe a wealthy, small beach town that doesn\u2019t want a rail project<\/a> that connects San Diego to the rest of the country beneath their homes. Maybe it\u2019s all of San Francisco, and its local control and discretionary process that affluent not-in-my-backyard residents use to stop housing from being built, as the state put it in a first-of-its kind report<\/a>, labeling the city as ground-zero for its housing crisis. It may be a fear of change, or something more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not doing anything that\u2019s extreme,\u201d Alston said. He was looking forward to living in this neighborhood and was really shocked at what happened. Whatever motivation there is behind the resistance to his home, that seemed to set this all in motion, and led to their applying for historic designation, \u201cit disadvantages people that are not part of the in-crowd or the neighborhood,\u201d Alston said. \u201cYou can kind of draw your own conclusions on what that means.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Before the Fair Housing Act, Baywood had housing covenants that made it illegal for people of color to buy a home in the neighborhood. \u201cWhen you have people who are saying we want to preserve this heritage, there\u2019s sort of a question of, what is it you\u2019re really looking to preserve? And if we\u2019re going to be talking about history, we should talk about all of it and whether or not that is worth preserving,\u201d Grimes said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\u2018A Sham\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u2018Not part of the in crowd\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n