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SOHO Needs Your Support for a Multiple Property Listing Ordinance
September/October 2019
 The Golden Hill survey highlights 11 residential courts, like this one, as part of the proposed residential courts Multiple Property Listing. Photo by Amie Hayes |
In 2016, as the City of San Diego staff worked on the North Park, Golden Hill, and Uptown historical surveys, preservationists spotted an important new need. A Multiple Property Listing (MPL) category could protect finite resources found in these historic communities: Victorian era buildings, bungalow courts, and geographical areas linked to landscaper and nurserywoman Kate Sessions. A new ordinance for multiple properties must offer the protections of a traditional historic district (within stated boundaries) to resources that are not contiguous and may even be scattered across neighborhoods.
All three types of resources are significant in telling the story of San Diego's 19th- and 20th-century cultural, social, and economic development. The city's valuable inventory of these irreplaceable resources could be chipped away or wiped out entirely if we don't act soon.
Currently, owners of these historic resources are unaware that they could be a contributor to a non-continuous district. Victorian era homes and commercial buildings, bungalow or residential courts built along early streetcar lines as affordable housing, and Sessions' former nurseries that provided thousands of plants and trees to Balboa Park alone are at serious risk. If they are not designated and/or not associated with similar properties to provide city-wide historical context via a special district, hundreds of these sites are vulnerable and ineligible for preservation incentives, such as Mills Act contracts. Owners are also being deprived of the pride of preserving important elements of our heritage and helping residents and visitors connect the historic dots through a noncontiguous district.
Please join SOHO in writing to Mayor Kevin Faulconer and your councilmember to alert them to this dangerous situation—and a relatively easy fix. Ask them to assign staff to draft a Multiple Properties Listing ordinance now for approval by the City Council. In this, the city's 250th commemorative year, let's encourage them to support saving and interpreting hundreds of historic resources. Losing these properties would leave holes in our neighborhoods and our collective story.
We need you to communicate support for the Multiple Property Listing ordinance today. Find your representative's HERE.
Download a sample letter with key points to personalize HERE, or write your own letter. Thanks very much for joining this letter-writing campaign!
To learn more about the buildings and sites eligible for an MPL, see these neighborhood surveys.
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