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Rigging the Rules
How the City Undermines Its Own Historical Resources Board
November/December 2025
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The City of San Diego claims that changes to the Historical Resources Board (HRB) are needed because it “struggles to fill vacancies” on this all-volunteer body. But what the city doesn’t say is that the shortage is entirely of its own making.
Over the years, city officials have quietly rewritten and manipulated the rules governing the HRB—rules that do not seem to apply to other city boards or commissions. Each change has chipped away at the board’s expertise and authority, leaving it less effective as the guardian of San Diego’s historic resources and more susceptible and malleable to development interest.
One of the most damaging policies prohibits local historic preservation architects and landscape architects from serving on the HRB as they might one day have a project come before the board. For every other city board, a simple recusal from discussion or voting is sufficient to manage potential conflicts of interest. But not for the HRB. Here, some of the most qualified professionals are simply barred from service altogether. And yet, they do have other architects serving.
Similarly, a respected landscape architect with extensive knowledge of 20th-century architecture served on the board, but he was later dismissed—not because of his credentials, but because he lived just outside the city limits in La Mesa. Yet the city has seated appointees from the South Bay and other outlying communities.
SOHO and the greater preservation community has over the years submitted highly qualified candidates, individuals with deep knowledge of architecture, history, and preservation, but the city failed to appoint individuals from these lists. Those who truly understand historic design and preservation tend to have a more discerning critical eye to assess what is deemed historic.
Instead, the city seems to prefer individuals without preservation backgrounds, often aligned with or drawn from the development industry, for a board charged specifically with protecting historic buildings and neighborhoods.
The city’s language on criteria states: "At least one Board member shall be appointed from among professionals in each of the following five historic preservation-related disciplines as required to meet the 'Certified Local Government' criteria of the State Office of Historic Preservation, as established by the National Historic Preservation Act: architecture, history, architectural history, archaeology, and landscape architecture. If a qualified volunteer cannot be found to fill one of the five professional Board positions, that Board position may be filled by a second professional from one of the other four historic preservation-related disciplines. However, no more than two professional Board positions should be filled by professionals in the same historic preservation-related field. Other Board members appointed may have experience or background in law, real estate, engineering, general contracting, finance, planning, or fine arts and should reflect diverse neighborhood representation and have demonstrated a special interest in historical preservation. No more than three owners of designated historical resources shall serve at any time.”
While this language appears to align with state and federal Certified Local Government (CLG) standards, it contains loopholes that weaken the Historical Resources Board. The clause allowing seats to be filled “if a qualified volunteer cannot be found” gives the city an excuse to bypass preservation professionals and instead appoint individuals with no preservation expertise—often from real estate, development, or planning fields that have direct conflicts of interest.
So far, members have been introduced under the demonstrated interest category, but the city has failed to provide information to the public showing the demonstrated interest.
Combined with limits on the number of historic property owners who can serve, these policies effectively sideline candidates with genuine knowledge and commitment to preservation, while giving the city cover to populate the board with unqualified or pliant appointees.
Truth be told, there is no shortage of qualified candidates willing to serve the public on the HRB any more than any other city board. What there is, instead, is a shortage of willingness by the city to appoint them.
Adding to these inequities is the HRB’s supermajority rule—another restriction that is unique among our city boards. Most, in fact almost all, commissions in San Diego operate by simple majority: a vote of more than half the members present. But the HRB is required to reach a supermajority to take actions. This rule, imposed years ago, was designed not to improve fairness or accuracy, but to make it harder for the board to do its primary job: to designate and protect historic resources.
Contrast this situation with the city's Planning Commission, for example, which routinely considers projects worth millions of dollars and is often comprised of members with personal development interests. The commission operates under standard majority rules for almost every decision; only in the rare case of suspending procedural rules is a two-thirds vote, or supermajority, required.
Yet the HRB, whose members are charged with safeguarding the city’s irreplaceable cultural and architectural heritage, must clear a supermajority bar often just to recognize locally what state and federal laws already define as significant historic resources.
We're living in a city mandating that pro-preservation decisions are more difficult to come by than demolition permits. Think about that: The city created a structural bias against protection and in favor of development. The result is that pro-preservation decisions require stricter requirements than those that allow demolition, creating a structural bias against protection and in favor of development.
This rule, more than any other, illustrates how the city has intentionally constrained its preservation system, making it harder to save historic places and easier to erase them.
San Diego deserves better. It deserves an HRB empowered, not weakened, and free from political manipulation. It demands an HRB comprised of experienced, perceptive professionals who understand the city’s architectural and cultural history and legacy.
Yet another revealing example of the city’s disregard for preservation expertise is the Middle-Income Housing Working Group, convened to explore housing policy solutions. Not a single preservationist was appointed to this group—not one preservation voice to provide balance, historical perspective, or factual understanding of how preservation and adaptive reuse actually and demonstrably support housing.
This omission was no accident. In reality, preservation has long been recognized as a provider of housing, not an obstacle to it. Historic neighborhoods and adaptive-reuse projects supply some of San Diego’s most naturally affordable, middle-income housing in walkable, sustainable communities that already embody the very qualities the city claims to promote. Yet by excluding preservationists from the Working Group, the city ensured that this proven and practical perspective would not be heard.
The result speaks volumes. The Working Group recommended that the city “improve historic review practices” because existing criteria were supposedly “generous” and “slow the pace of housing development.” It called for “ministerial solutions” to historic review—meaning automatic, non-discretionary approvals—and even “ministerial mitigation” for non-architectural historic resources, such as cultural and archaeological sites. In other words, the group proposed gutting the review process that protects San Diego’s heritage.
City staff’s response confirmed this direction, pledging to “streamline” historic review and to “develop a historic resources regulation reform program.” Without expert oversight or a preservation voice at the table, this so-called reform effort risks becoming a fast track for erasure—prioritizing expediency and profit over history, character, and community identity.
Once again, the city demonstrates that it is not seeking balance between housing and preservation, but rather seeking to dismantle preservation altogether under the banner of housing reform.
When the rules are rigged, the public loses. It’s time to restore fairness, expertise, and integrity to the Historical Resources Board so it can once again serve its true purpose: protecting the historic built environment and history that belong to all San Diegans. At the very least, we must reinstate a simple majority vote to the HRB and let the members do their best for us.
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