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Preservation Is Winning Some Battles, But the War Is Far from Over
By Bruce Coons
November/December 2026
Historic preservation has scored important victories in California this year. But those victories arrived amid 2026’s larger political push to weaken the laws, regulations, and public processes that protect historic places. The good news is that preservation advocacy is making a difference. Advocates helped secure two important legislative victories this year.
AB 1265
Authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney, it extends California’s Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit through 2031. Governor Gavin Newsom signed this bill on September 27, 2026.
The tax credit program is an important tool and incentive that helps make historic rehabilitation financially feasible. Reusing existing buildings can provide housing, support neighborhood revitalization, and significantly reduce the enormous amount of landfill waste created by demolition and new construction.
Beginning in 2027, AB 1265 provides a 20 percent tax credit for qualified rehabilitation expenditures on certified historic structures, with a maximum credit of $5 million per taxpayer. The crucial next step is to secure state funding. A tax credit is only useful if there is money behind it, and preservation advocates are calling on Sacramento for at least $100 million to capitalize the program.
AB 2576
Authored by Assemblymember John Harabedian, it delivered another important victory. This new law addresses a serious problem created by SB 79 in 2025, which established with housing development requirements in transit-oriented development areas. AB 2576 expands SB 79’s historic-resource exclusions to include qualified, individually listed historic resources and contributing buildings in historic districts listed in the State Historical Resources Inventory. Governor Newsom signed this bill on September 14, 2026.
These victories are well worth celebrating. They also remind us that laws can be changed when preservationists show up, speak out, and stay engaged.
But ongoing threats haven't gone away and these victories should not obscure the larger picture. Across California and in San Diego, historic preservation protections are being treated by some policymakers and development interests as obstacles that need to be removed, rather than community assets to be protected. Increasingly, the push for ever faster, careless development is accompanied by proposals to reduce local project review and limit public participation.
In addition, important preservation safeguards in use for decades are under extreme pressure. SOHO and other preservationists are monitoring proposals to gut the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and similar efforts to weaken environmental review under the guise of streamlining.
And at the federal level, the stakes are particularly significant.
60 years ago, the National Historic Preservation Act was signed into law, giving communities a voice in protecting the places that tell our story.
Now Congress is considering permitting reform legislation that would gut the Section 106 review process, narrowing what historic resources the law protects, weakening State, Tribal, and local voices and shifting more authority to federal agencies to make unilateral decisions.
A major federal permitting bill could significantly weaken protections for historic places, sacred Tribal sites, clean water, and public lands. It is the S. 5653, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. Despite being promoted simply as permitting reform, the bill would instead make sweeping changes to the National Historic Preservation Act, including weakening the Section 106 review process, limiting consultation with State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, narrowing which projects require review, and restricting the public’s ability to challenge harmful decisions.
For Tribal Nations, the stakes are especially profound. Section 106 provides a seat at the federal decision-making table when projects threaten sacred places, ancestral lands, burial places, and cultural landscapes. Once those places are damaged or destroyed, consultation after the fact cannot undo the loss.
The implications here are serious. Historic preservation depends on meaningful consultation, public participation, and the ability of communities to have a voice in decisions affecting the places that tell our stories. This legislation threatens those safeguards.
Public participation is one of the most important tools available to communities when a historic place is threatened. This is why advocacy matters. This bill goes to a Senate vote on November 9th, please stand up for our natural and cultural resources, our Tribes, our history, and our voice! Please contact not only your Senators and House Representatives, but also your Governor, Mayor, and other elected officials, to ask them to oppose the permitting reform bill.
The U.S. Senate could begin considering S. 5653, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, as soon as November 9. We encourage SOHO members and supporters to contact California's U.S. Senators now and urge them to oppose provisions that weaken Section 106 protections. Contact your US Senators.
We also encourage you to visit “Defend Section 106.”
That AB 1265 and AB 2576 will become law in January 2027 demonstrates that preservation advocacy works. Designed to incentivize historic preservation and rehabilitation, in one case, or to redirect misguided thinking in the other, these new laws also illustrate why we advocates must sustain our hard work and refuse to let up.
These two legislative victories did not just happen automatically. They came from years of work by preservation organizations and their allies: tracking legislation, educating lawmakers, submitting comments, building coalitions, and urging supporters to make their voices heard.
Every law protecting historic resources exists because someone fought for it. Every historic district that survives another development cycle does so because people paid attention. Every historic building that is rehabilitated instead of demolished represents a decision rooted in the knowledge that our past has value that will enrich our future.
That is hard-won advocacy. And it works. So, yes, let’s celebrate the wins. And let’s rededicate ourselves to more success over the inevitable challenges to come.
SOHO thanks the California Preservation Foundation, SOHO members, and the many preservation advocates across California whose skillful and persistent advocacy helped make these recent victories possible.
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