SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

I am generally highly skeptical of &quot;historic&quot; designations on buildings or other public features. Ultimately they&#x27;re just used to ossify things and act as an excuse to refuse change.<p>History is certainly valuable, and I do think we should try to preserve truly outstanding examples of history, but this sort of determination too subjective, and often the balance swings too far into a realm of preserving things of dubious value.<p>One way I look at it: in the longest of long terms, every single building will have had something significant enough about it to earn it a &quot;historic&quot; designation, and then you can&#x27;t change anything, ever.

If you do not zone for housing you are zoning for homelessness. SF needs to figure out the future they want to have: a vibrant community where people from all walks of life can thrive, or blocks of homeless people living outside of the “historic” funeral parlor and the “historic” laundromat.<p>My opinion, the whole city burned down once, and it kept on going. It will be ok to lose a couple “historic” buildings.

Good.<p>The city needs to stop living in the past

Sad. Communities should be allowed to preserve their character and charm and preserve quality of life for their existing residents. This forced top down push for density doesn’t make sense - there is a whole country of places to live in, and yet everyone feels entitled to crowd into expensive and desirable places at the price point that fits them. It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots for newcomers. Personally it feels unfair and unnecessary because the same people have other places in the country to choose from where they could live and work - they just don’t want to accept the trade offs and live within their means.