San Mateo Forward

In 2021, the Alston family bought a house at 415 Fairfax Avenue in Baywood. It was old — built in 1933 — and once they moved in they found the problems that come with old houses. Fixing it would have cost a fortune and dragged on for years. Tearing it down and starting fresh was cheaper and faster, so they planned a larger home with an accessory dwelling unit for his mother-in-law. First the city made them sit through a review to decide whether their 90-year-old house was historic. It wasn't.

What that triggered has cost San Mateo taxpayers something like half a million dollars — and that figure doesn't include what the Alstons themselves spent to defend the right to live in their own house.

A well-funded campaign

Once the Alstons' plans became public, a group of neighbors set out to stop them. The effort was led by the Baywood Neighborhood Association (BNA) — the homeowners' group in one of San Mateo's most affluent neighborhoods. At the time it was run by Mike Nash, the Alstons' next-door neighbor, as president, with his wife Lisa Diaz-Nash as vice president.

This was not a letter-writing campaign. BNA spent its members' dues to pay a preservation architect to assemble a report declaring that the city was wrong and that the Alstons' unremarkable home was in fact historic. They also retained land-use attorneys to argue that tearing down one house required a full environmental review under CEQA. A month before the project reached the Planning Commission, a second group — the "San Mateo Heritage Alliance" — filed its incorporation papers with Mike Nash on its board.

The Alstons, who are Black and Korean and had lived on the Peninsula for decades, said the campaign made them feel unwelcome in their new neighborhood.

The city approved the project in 2022 regardless. The opposition's one win was cosmetic — they got the new house redesigned to suit their taste. In July 2022 the Planning Commission looked at the rebuild and found nothing to deny: the neighborhood wasn't a historic district, the plans met every standard, and state law tied the city's hands.

The old house came down that year, being replaced with a new bigger house and an ADU. This is exactly the type of infill development that increases the local property tax base and that California has been endeavoring to make easier to build over the past decade.

Losing wasn't enough

When the house was demolished it did not end the campaign.

In November 2023 the Heritage Alliance went to California's State Historical Resources Commission and applied to designate all of Baywood — 350 to 444 homes, depending where you draw the line — as a single historic district. The application flatly stated that a historic district would shield the neighborhood from SB 9, the state law that lets owners split a lot or add units. The pitch to neighbors was to landmark the entire neighborhood or else the house next door might become a fourplex.