St. Francis Wood was added to the National Register of Historic Places — the culmination of a years-long campaign. But housing activists say the designation will deter future housing development and preserve a landscape that fosters racial segregation.
Its winding streets are graced by ornamental fountains and shaded by mature eucalyptus trees. Lush, privately owned park land abounds. Its 1920s-era houses, an eclectic mix of Spanish, French, Italian Renaissance and storybook styles, regularly sell for upwards of $3 million.
“If you are preserving structures with the requirement that they remain single-family homes forever, when the origin of that single-family home was so Black people and Japanese people and Chinese people could not live there, is that really what you want to preserve?” says Annie Fryman, a housing policy expert who works for the backyard cottage developer Abodu and previously worked as a legislative aide to Senator Scott Wiener in Sacramento.
St. Francis Wood is one of the most fully realized and best documented “residence parks” in the nation, Richard Brandi writes in the book Garden Neighborhoods of San Francisco. A pattern of suburban development inspired by the City Beautiful movement that peaked in popularity during the teens and '20s, residence parks were conceived of as an idyllic retreat for the upper-middle classes that retained easy access to downtown jobs via streetcar.
Since the Supreme Court struck down racial covenants in 1948, St. Francis Wood has become more diverse in certain respects. As of 2016, the neighborhood was 45% white, 45% Asian, 5% Hispanic and 0% Black. The median household income was $188,000 per year. St. Francis Wood’s historic designation will also require all projects in the neighborhood, from remodels to new construction, to go through an extended process under the California Environmental Quality Act. The paperwork costs about $10,000 and will add an additional 3-4 months to project approvals, says Steve Vettel, a land use attorney with Farella Braun and Martel.
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