If you’ve ever gone back to your childhood home after a long absence, you have a sense of how quickly Americans reinvent, well, everything. Buildings that are only a few decades old get torn down, empty space gets filled, whole neighborhoods are transformed, and familiar landmarks vanish. This kind of constant change is part of the American psyche in a lot of ways—but it does come with a price in terms of lost history.
That’s what the concept of a historic designation is for. If a building or area has real historic significance, putting barriers in place to ensure that it’s not torn down or significantly altered makes sense. But the process of declaring a neighborhood a historic district isn’t always in a homeowner’s best interests—and is sometimes used in nefarious ways that serve the interests of a small group of people while making your life a lot more difficult.
Historical downsides
One thing to look out for if a few folks in your charming, older neighborhood start talking about making it into a historic district is “snob zoning”: an attempt to keep lower-income folks out by restricting the type of development that can be done there. In some areas of the country, efforts to have neighborhoods declared historic are being interpreted as strategies to bypass local zoning laws and exclude people from a neighborhood by prohibiting certain types of multi-unit or low-income housing, even if zoning laws allow or even require them. Historic neighborhoods tend to be more affluent and whiter, after all (although this isn’t entirely due to exclusionary practices—historic homes tend to be located in white, affluent areas for many reasons).
Even if you’re not bothered by the idea of keeping certain kinds of development out of your neighborhood, there’s another reason to resist any call for a historic designation: The same development restrictions often result in higher costs and harder maintenance for homeowners. And while historic designations tend to increase property values, they can also take longer to sell because buyers worry about the restrictions involved.
Backdoor HOA
If you’re not careful, your neighborhood can be designated as a historic district against your wishes—even if a majority of people vote against it. Your home can be designated a historic place without your involvement, in fact. In some areas, all it takes is an interested neighbor to petition to have your property declared a landmark to start the process, and it can be pretty costly to fight it—with no guarantee that you’ll win.
Historic designations are commonly used to control what people can do with their own private property, and can be a way of creating a kind of “backdoor” homeowners association. Some historic neighborhoods (many of which have dubious claims to the designation) around the country have HOA-like restrictions on renovations, repairs, and even landscaping. And these restrictions can affect your ability to sell the property. If you want to sell to a developer, for example, you might be prevented from doing so because they can’t obtain demolition permits for a historic property.
Fighting history
If you suspect someone in your neighborhood is thinking along these lines—imposing historic designations on homes or the entire area in order to block development or impose control on their neighbors—you should probably get involved, since historic designation can happen even if most of the area opposes it. There’s no easy button here—fighting against a proposed historic designation is bare-knuckle democracy in action. A few things to do:
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Don’t assume you’ll be asked your opinion. While local historic designation laws vary, on a federal level the National Register of Historic Places assumes neighbors support the designation unless they object. That’s why one homeowner in Portland, Oregon split ownership of his property into 1,000 individual trusts, so he could object 1,000 times in an attempt to stop an ongoing effort to designate his neighborhood a historic district.
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Contact your local authorities, including council members or other local representatives, as well as the agency in charge of historical designations. Find out when relevant public hearings are being held. Then attend those meetings (with neighbors if you can recruit some) and speak out against the proposal.
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Contact pro-housing groups that work against these kinds of “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) maneuvers that make it difficult to build low-cost or accessible housing. They may have resources and local knowledge that can be very effective. For example, Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) has chapters around the country, and their website offers a lot of other resources.
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It doesn’t hurt to contact local journalists. There’s usually a high level of interest in stories about NIMBY neighbors, and stories about neighborhood drama.