When Donna Howe meets new friends in her cozy Ingleside Terraces neighborhood, she often quizzes them on the age of local Craftsman and revival-style homes.

Howe’s family has lived in the southwestern San Francisco neighborhood — known for its distinctive architecture and single-family homes — for five generations, since the 1940s.

But as the city faces a dire housing shortage and increasing pressure from state officials to build residential units, many locals are increasingly concerned that Ingleside Terraces could be targeted for rampant development.

“I have deep roots and deep love for this neighborhood,” Howe, 72, told The Standard. “I don’t want to see it go.”

San Francisco faces a state mandate to add tens of thousands of residential units over the next six years. To address that goal, Mayor Daniel Lurie last week released a zoning plan that would add more than 36,000 units in west-side neighborhoods, including Ingleside Terraces, where opposition to development has historically been strong.

To avoid that, the Ingleside Terraces Homes Association is pushing to designate the neighborhood as a “historic district,” a state-recognized status that critics see as a tool to stall development. The association hired an architectural consulting firm and three months ago submitted an application to the California Office of Historic Preservation. 

The pursuit of a “historic” designation is an increasingly popular tactic in San Francisco and other California cities. Residents of St. Francis Wood successfully petitioned the state for historic status in 2022, while a proposal submitted in 2024 by a coalition of North Beach residents is in the final stage of review at the State Historical Resources Commission. 

Wealthy neighborhoods in San Mateo, Palo Alto, and Pasadena have taken similar steps in recent years in attempts at avoiding new development.

The trend has generated criticism from groups that want California cities to build more housing. The North Beach proposal in particular has sparked intense debate.

Ryan Patterson, an attorney for the pro-housing groups YIMBY Law and YIMBY Action, called the movement “a last-ditch, desperate effort” to block development.

“The anti-growth NIMBYs are trying to create new historic districts just to avoid state housing laws,” Patterson said. “It’s very unfortunate that they’ve taken this approach, and I hope people recognize what they’re actually doing and say no to it.”

Ingleside Terraces was built in the wake of the 1906 earthquake on the site of a former racetrack. The neighborhood of around 750 single-family homes is known for its architectural diversity and central 28-foot concrete sundial.

Homeowners have for decades contemplated petitioning for historic status, but their efforts recently gained momentum. And they’re not the only ones.

Woody LaBounty, president of the preservation group San Francisco Heritage, said more neighborhoods are exploring the historic designation route as the state intensifies pressure on cities to increase their housing supplies.

LaBounty said that until recently, historic status was largely a symbolic, apolitical achievement. But with a barrage of new state laws that aim to expedite housing production in areas previously immune to more construction, many locals became worried that “the whole decision will be taken out of my hands,” LaBounty said. 

“You could see some big changes with unintended consequences that won’t add tons of housing,” LaBounty said. “But they may mess up the way a neighborhood looks and feels.”

Individual properties and neighborhoods can achieve historic status across three levels: local, state, and federal. Local historic status in San Francisco offers protections against development because the designation requires that major remodels or construction be approved by the Historic Preservation Commission and the San Francisco Planning Department.

For example, the Jackson Square Historic District is under historic protection, and City Hall and Fairmont Hotel are designated local landmarks.

St. Francis Wood Historic District is not recognized on the city level but is listed as historic on state and national lists. State and federal designation come with benefits such as tax credits for property restoration projects and, crucially, potential exemptions from certain state housing laws.

California lawmakers have over the last decade approved a slew of laws to streamline housing production and limit local authority to reject certain projects. Those include Senate Bill 423, which cut the approval time for housing projects, and Senate Bill 9, which allows homeowners to build up to four units on single-family lots.

Both laws provide limited protections for historical buildings and neighborhoods that exempt them from more construction. The state’s density bonus law, which allows developers to build more units in a project as long as they set aside a percentage for low-income residents, similarly carves out some exceptions for historic areas. 

Historic status doesn’t necessarily stop housing but often makes it more difficult to construct homes or demolish an old house to replace it with a multi-family building. 

Still, neighborhood preservation and new development can both be achieved, said Rachael Tanner, San Francisco’s director of citywide planning. 

“Preserving our city’s historic resources doesn’t need to be the enemy of building new homes,” Tanner said. “Development and historic preservation can coexist in harmony.”

San Francisco Planning Commission President Lydia So said it’s possible to achieve a more tailored approach to preservation, such as designating individual buildings, rather than entire neighborhoods, as historic.

“People sometimes misunderstand ‘historic preservation.’ They think it means freezing things in time,” she said. 

While Ingleside Terraces is the latest San Francisco neighborhood to apply for historic status, it’s hardly the most controversial. 

The North Beach proposal, which faces a final decision by state regulators, has generated criticism from housing advocates who say exempting an entire neighborhood from development would worsen San Francisco’s housing crunch. 

Pro-housing activists in April hosted a satirical tour in North Beach to highlight how an empty parking lot and burned building site would be listed as historic under the proposal.

Aaron Peskin, a former Board of Supervisors presidents who represented North Beach and is an advocate for preserving neighborhood character over development, said there is widespread support for designating North Beach as a historic district. He cited a June poll of 600 people that showed 63% of respondents supported the initiative.

“North Beach has been San Francisco’s historic living room for generations. It’s beloved and celebrated all over the city,” Peskin said.

Despite the pushback, interest in historic designation continues to grow. At a recent town hall in the Sunset, residents expressed interest in pursuing historic status as the neighborhood faces more development under Lurie’s zoning plans. A city planning survey identified a small portion of the area that could qualify as historic but determined that almost 800 properties were not qualified or ineligible.

Annie Fryman, director of special projects at the think tank SPUR, said westside neighborhoods with more single-family homes and homeowners are more ideal for denser development.

“When these neighborhoods try to wiggle out of housing obligations by establishing historic districts,” Fryman said, “it pushes development pressure into areas where it could be more disruptive to renters and small businesses.”

LaBounty disagreed with criticism that preservation efforts are ill-intentioned, arguing that the process is “not something that can be casually abused.” 

“People who do it are 99% trying to support and preserve special places,” the SF Heritage leader said.

He also noted that commercial corridors such as Clement Street in the Inner Richmond and Chestnut Street in the Marina, as well as Chinatown and Japantown, have historic value.

But designating large swaths of San Francisco as historic would almost certainly complicate Lurie’s goal of building tens of thousands of units across the city — a plan YIMBY groups have argued is not ambitious enough.

The movement for historic status adds another layer of complexity and sets the stage for a political battle in the months ahead.

“Everybody is in support of preserving the special places,” LaBounty said. “It’s how. And that’s where politics usually come in.”