The concept of single-family zoning was born from lies. Specifically, Bay Area read.

For decades starting in the late 19th century, white residents of San Francisco tried, unsuccessfully, to impose state-sanctioned segregation on their Chinese neighbors. The 1890 Bingham Ordinance, which explicitly banned Chinese residents from certain areas of the city under penalty of jail, was thrown out by the courts on equal protection grounds — as were subsequent efforts at openly racialized zoning.

Undeterred, white property owners searched for legal end-arounds. And they found one in single-family zoning. White elites had almost exclusive access to the kind of capital needed to purchase a freestanding home. And so single-family zoning became a tool for de facto apartheid, under the guise of separation of use. The idea was first implemented in Berkeley in 1916 as a tool to eject Asian-owned laundries and a “negro dance hall” from the proximity of white homeowners. San Francisco soon followed suit.

Like the Bingham Ordinance before it, single-family zoning was initially shot down by courts — for its only slightly more subtle racialized designs. It ultimately survived constitutional scrutiny, however, with the aid of a Supreme Court reversal — by the same justices who upheld “separate but equal.”

And so the practice spread throughout the country — the Bay Area’s gift to American racism.

On Tuesday, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to finally end single-family zoning in the city that helped birth it. But, with the weight of history on their shoulders, did supervisors rise to the challenge of crafting a bill that earnestly addresses a century of historical wrong?

They didn’t.

Instead, their effort, like single-family zoning itself, was a cheap ploy — a not-so-subtle end-around to subvert a new California law mandating streamlined development in exclusionary neighborhoods. Despite made-for-headlines boasts about allowing fourplexes and six-unit homes on formerly single-family plots, the supervisors’ housing bill will do nothing to spur denser development in excluded neighborhoods.

And they know it.

A planning department feasibility study shows that developers trying to navigate the bill’s restrictions will lose money by the handfuls should they try to build denser housing on a formerly single-family plot.

Cue the chorus of boo-hoos. But guess what happens when developers are guaranteed to lose money? They don’t build anything.

As if to stamp home the fact their bill has no intention of breaking up a century of single-family dominance, supervisors inserted a rule that says only those living in their homes for more than five years, or those who inherited the real estate, can take advantage of new streamlined zoning rules.

What is the point of ending single-family zoning if developers aren’t actually allowed to easily build denser new housing in formerly restricted areas?

“Luxury” condos are notorious boogeymen in San Francisco. But single-family homes are the city’s most luxurious form of housing. Their median sales price is $1.95 million in 2022; that’s $700,000 more than a condo. Single-family homes, with rare concessions, are exempted from rent control — making them largely unaffordable to working families. Homeowners, meanwhile, are granted generous state and federal tax breaks. They also enjoy protections from police search and seizure that many renters do not. Home ownership in America affords a higher status of citizenship. And single-family ownership is at the top of that status.

“This is not the final statement on density in low-density neighborhoods,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the housing bill’s author, said on Tuesday.

Perhaps like that. And the board deserves praise for apparently coming to terms with Mayor London Breed on new social housing spending that could allow government to directly build more affordable units.

But that effort will provide just a fraction of the more than 80,000 new homes San Francisco needs.

As if putting a stamp on the limited scale of their vision, supervisors this week moved forward with another dubious housing measure. This one, draped in sanctimonious language of affordability, would appear on the November ballot—despite feasibility studies that, once again, show nothing will get built under the tight-fisted rules of the plan. With a wink and a nod, the measure’s goal appears to be sabotaging a competing initiative by Breed that would streamline the construction of much-needed dense, mixed-income developments.

These cheap theatrics are ideological parlor tricks in service of a status quo that is failing San Francisco.

Single-family zoning was born of racial malice and a desire to find a legally permissible end-around to integration. That malice is built into the physical structure of our communities.

Read put us here. They won’t get us out.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

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San Francisco plans to get rid of single-family zoning and instead allow fourplexes in every neighborhood and six-unit homes on all corner lots, a change long sought by housing development advocates.

But champions of greater housing density are worried that San Francisco’s legislation might result in very few new homes being built. They fear that restrictive provisions limiting who can take advantage of the new permissions and how fast property owners can get their projects approved will stymie new construction.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors narrowly approved the legislation, which is intended to alleviate the city’s notorious housing crunch. The vote marks the culmination of more than a year’s work by Supervisor Rafael Mandelman to pass legislation that would promote fourplexes in San Francisco. In early 2021, Mandelman announced a more modest plan that failed to advance. He returned last summer with a new proposal that the board passed in a 6-4 vote Tuesday, with Supervisors Ahsha Safaí, Catherine Stefani, Shamann Walton and Matt Dorsey dissenting. Supervisor Connie Chan was absent.

Some supervisors opposed the legislation because it circumvents the fast-tracked permit approval process required by a new state law — SB9 — that was passed to promote the construction of more multi-unit housing.

With the ordinance, Mandelman and co-sponsor Supervisor Myrna Melgar are trying to encourage more density while preserving local control over new development. Mandelman has acknowledged that his legislation leaves more work to be done to address the housing crisis.

“I share the frustration of those who feel that a measure that was already modest and incremental to begin with ended up even more so after working its way through the legislative process, but I believe today’s vote is nonetheless a move in the right direction for San Francisco,” Mandelman said in a statement after the vote. “Still, the reality is that this board needs to do better and be bolder if we are to have any hope of achieving the significant increase in housing production required by state law and demanded by the moment.”

Richard Hillis, the city’s planning director, said the impact of the fourplex ordinance will likely be “fairly small” as measured by new housing units. But he called the act of ending single-family zoning “a pretty big step” — at least in terms of recognizing that building multi-family rather than single-family homes is good policy.

But he added that he’s “nervous that the changes they’re making are either not going far enough, or they’re putting requirements in place that will result in too few units being produced.”

Currently, about 40% of San Francisco’s land area is zoned for only single-family homes. The ordinance rezones all those areas to allow duplexes by default. Property owners can then receive a density exception from the city that allows them to build up to four units, six on corner lots.

Any one building more than two units would have those extra units subject to rent control — a program that some developers say can make the economics of building more homes harder to pencil out.

And only those who have owned their properties for at least five years — or inherited it from a family member who did — can qualify for the density exception at all.

The latter provision, implemented in committee at the urging of Supervisor Dean Preston, could hamstring the ordinance’s ability to translate into much new development, some observers say.

Preston pushed the restriction in order to prevent rampant real estate speculation. But critics say the ownership restriction could simply push more developers toward building more expensive duplexes and single-family homes rather than more affordable fourplexes.

“That doesn’t make sense to us in terms of what we think the public policy objective should be, which is … to encourage more small units and more rent-controlled units,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City .

Todd David, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, said he thought the original version of the bill wouldn’t have much of an impact, but the amendments made that even more true.

“They took the original policy they knew would create little housing and they added some additional bells and whistles to ensure that it will create very little to no housing,” David said.

Additionally, the ordinance allows San Francisco to get around a key provision of SB9.

The 2021 state law lets homeowners who want to add extra units get approval through a streamlined process that bypasses city officials’ ability to use their discretion to reject housing developments. But the law applies only to areas zoned for single-family homes, so San Francisco’s rezoning of the whole city would make SB9 no longer apply to the permit approval process.

The San Francisco legislation’s end-run around SB9 was cited by Safaí and Dorsey when they explained to their colleagues why they were voting against the local measure.

“I believe it’s too small of a step,” said Safaí, who had proposed his own fourplex ordinance that was not incorporated into Mandelman’s.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and co-author of SB9, said in a statement after the board vote that, while Mandelman’s original ordinance was a “good-faith proposal,” the amended version, “sadly, doesn’t cut it.”

“The ordinance avoids SB9 without offering an alternative robust path to more housing,” Wiener said.

Even without San Francisco’s restrictions, however, SB9 likely would have had limited impact in the city, according to housing experts and a Chronicle analysis.

Mandelman has previously said he was open to discussing ways of fast-tracking permit approvals but that any such changes would have to be made by supervisors later.

“This is not the final statement on density in low-density neighborhoods,” he said Tuesday.

Hillis said that streamlining approval for fourplexes and sixplexes once the city is rezoned would likely require a ballot measure to amend the City Charter. San Franciscans are already voting on at least one amendment — possibly two — in November aimed at accelerating housing production for some projects.

Wiener said he did not believe that San Francisco could rely on its newest fourplex law to comply with its state-mandated plan to meet housing production goals. The city must plan to build 82,000 units between 2023 and 2031.

“This is further evidence that the voters are going to have to take matters into their own hands to ensure San Franciscans have enough housing to meet our city’s needs,” he said in his statement.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who supported the ordinance, said Tuesday that he was “actually kind of shocked that there is opposition to this.” He and Preston both said they believed the real reason for the resistance was that many of those in favor of more housing development also oppose rent control.

“Let’s be clear: They hate rent control and that is why they are opposing a bill that increases density in San Francisco,” Peskin said.

JD Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris

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Amazon’s signature smiley blue logos are spreading across southeast San Francisco’s industrial landscape. And not everyone is happy about it.

The second most valuable company in the world, Amazon has been gobbling up space throughout the southeast corner of the city, taking advantage of zoning meant to preserve blue-collar jobs in a market in which housing and office space has typically generated higher revenues.

At 888 Minnesota St., at the foot of a slow street and across from Esprit Park, Amazon has established an UltraFastFresh logistics center. A half-mile southeast at 435 23rd St., just to the south of the Potrero Power Station, a large sign outside a 75,000 square foot warehouse says “welcome Amazonians.” And further to the south, at 749 Toland St., Amazon has a 112,000 square foot delivery hub.

But Amazon’s biggest and most controversial incursion into San Francisco is a proposed 725,000 square foot delivery hub at 900 7th St., a six-acre rectangular parcel in Showplace Square Amazon bought for $200 million. For decades that site was home to garbage trucks, a fleet of 300 that each morning would rumble out onto the streets of Showplace Square at an hour the streets were still dark and most city residents still in bed.

Now the trash trucks are gone — the garbage company Recology relocated them to Brisbane — but a proposal from the new property owner is causing consternation from neighbors who say that a heavy industrial use no longer fits in a creative neighborhood that has evolved into a mix of housing, design and artist spaces, light “advanced” manufacturing and an expanding California College of the Arts campus.

Amazon plans to expand into San Francisco by turning this location at 900 7th St., and others, into facilities for the company.

Samantha Laurey/The Chronicle

David Meckel, senior adviser to the president at CCA, said three daily shifts of 400 workers would generate 2,800 car trips, in addition to the 70 Amazon trucks that will be coming and going from the facility. The traffic could create a pedestrian nightmare for CCA’s 1,600 students as well as for residents at 888 7th St, a 224-unit that overlooks the future Amazon site.

“To me it’s not about Amazon, it’s about the intensity of the use,” said Meckel. “I’d have the same concerns if it were FedEx or UPS. For me it’s about urban design.”

Will Roscoe, who lives at 888 7th St., said the pollution and traffic would worsen air quality in a neighborhood in which freeways and Caltrain already generate high levels of particulate matter. About a decade ago, Roscoe, who works for a nonprofit, was evicted from a building in the Western Addition. He feels like the Amazon project will once again force him to move.

“Hundreds of people now have come in to make this their neighborhood and this just really turns the clock back to a massive usage that is antithetical to a livable neighborhood for people with children, seniors,” he said. “It’s contrary to that.”

But while a busy distribution center may feel out of sync with Showplace Square’s current vibe, it is in fact just what city zoning calls for. And Recology only decided to sell the site after neighbors had rejected an earlier 2018 plan to build about 1,000 units of housing there.

At a pre-application meeting at the site on June 27, 2019, a packed room of Dogpatch and Potrero Hill residents lambasted the idea of ​​building housing on the site. One called it a “a land grab and giveaway to developers.” Another resident said San Francisco suffered from a “PDR crisis” — PDR stands for production, distribution and repair — and that the property should remain zoned for industrial uses. One attendee called it “a bad project,” while another argued that “housing is not needed in the neighborhood.”

If the vocal opposition was intended to give Recology cold feet, it worked. Recology first cut the number of proposed units in half. Then, facing an uphill approval process that was likely to drag on three or four years, not including delays from environmental lawsuits common in San Francisco, the rubbish company gave up and sold the six-acre site to Amazon.

“We received an offer and determined it was in Recology’s interest to accept it,” said Eric Potashner, the Vice President & Senior Director of Strategic Affairs at Recology.

While the housing plan would have required a series of zoning changes and conditional use authorizations, Amazon’s proposed 57-foot high warehouse is consistent with the Eastern Neighborhoods land use plan adopted in December of 2008 after a decade of debate. The site is part of a block of parcels roughly bounded by 7th Street, Division Street, Potrero Avenue and 16th Street, that were zoned for industrial uses.

Ken Rich, who was project manager at the Planning Department for the Eastern Neighborhoods rezoning, said the city tried to strike a balance between protecting industrial jobs and creating room for new housing. The plan has generated thousands of new housing units in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill. It has also prompted property owners at sites like 1 DeHaro, 100 Hooper and 150 Hooper to build PDR spaces for advanced manufacturing.

The Eastern Neighborhood Plans goal of protecting light industrial jobs on a swath of land that would otherwise have been gobbled up by tech office and housing developers has done what it was intended to do, according to Anne Taupier, director of development at the Mayor’s Office of Economic and workforce development.

“A clear set of rules to play by were established and it really hasn’t changed since then,” said Taupier. “We think it has worked and is continuing to work.”

The opposition to Amazon’s 7th Street plan is motivated not just by land use issues but by the company’s track record of crushing unionization efforts and reputation for grueling work conditions, according to JR Eppler, a board member with Potrero Boosters.

Eppler said that neighbors around 888 Minnesota St. have had success over the last year working with Amazon on issues like traffic, parking and security. Friends of Jackson Park is in talks with Amazon about the company possibly contributing funding to badly needed improvements. But the labor issues are harder to negotiate, he said.

In a recent SF Standard article two San Francisco Board of Supervisor members, Aaron Peskin and Shamann Walton, suggested that the city had been overly receptive to Amazon’s project and less than upfront with residents and other stakeholders about the project.

Taupier said Amazon is at the very beginning of its approval process and there would be ample time for residents and elected officials to shape the project.

“We are going to have conversations with Amazon about supporting our local small businesses, including our brick and mortar retail businesses,” said Taupier. “We will make sure they understand that San Francisco has expectations that if you are going to do business here you are going to be part of the community.”

In the meantime the empty rectangular lot feels like an island in a neighborhood that has moved on. To the north is the condo building at 888 7th St., which houses many senior Chinese immigrants. To the south on Hooper Street is headquarters for Adobe and a new SFMade building that houses a roster of manufacturing businesses including robotics groups, a distillery and a fabricator of everything from drapes to bags to hydrogen tanks for the automobile and industrial markets.

Scott Mason, a San Francisco commercial real estate broker who specializes in industrial properties, said Amazon is among a select group of well-funded users who qualify for PDR sites but have far deeper pockets than the typical family run auto body or plumbing supply company. He said mom and pop PDR companies needed to make a city like San Francisco function can not compete in a market dominated by Amazon.

“Your every day smaller company in San Francisco is having a tough time,” he said. “The venture-backed tech-driven company can pay more per square foot because they are not working off a regular balance sheet.”

Stephen Maduli-Williams, Amazon’s manager of economic development policy, said construction at the old Recolgy site would not start for 18 to 24 months. He said there would be retail at the site and Amazon would work with local residents and businesses to determine what sort of goods might be sold. He said the company is looking into how Amazon could support Jackson Park.

“We intend to use this time to listen to and engage all of our neighbors and stakeholders, with the goal of reaching a shared vision not only for the project, but to also create long lasting partnerships” he said.

For Dogpatch and Potrero residents there is an increasing sense that Amazon “has the neighborhoods surrounded,” said Eppler. Roscoe said he is concerned that some neighborhood groups will successfully squeeze Amazon to fund various needs, leaving residents to live with the trucks with the blue smiles coming and going.

“Nobody speaks for our building,” said Roscoe. “We don’t want it. Nobody I’ve talked to is like, ‘Oh yes, good idea.’ The others in the coalition are going for community benefits — but what community benefits could they give us? Free gas masks? Lifetime cancer screening? The benefit we need is to not be subjected to traffic and pollution.”

JK Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen

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Debate over development in the Cleveland National Forest is raging again, the latest in a long history of struggles about land use in an area that stretches across San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties.

A proposal that will eventually go before the San Diego County Board of Supervisors is inflaming tensions between supporters of denser construction and conservationists, who for more than 100 years have viewed the Cleveland forest as the last frontier in preserving open space in the region.

The measure would amend the county’s general plan to allow more building on thousands of privately held acres within the national forest. The number of dwellings permitted on these properties would increase from about 4,300 to roughly 6,250. Under a citizens’ initiative that expired in 2010, the minimum lot size for a private parcel in the forest was 40 acres. No changes have been approved since.

“Planning the future landscape of rural East County is often a balancing act involving economic growth, community needs and the preservation of our backcountry character,” Supervisor Dianne Jacob, whose District 2 includes much of the region in question, said in a statement. “I’ll weigh these factors, along with any other input I get, before making a decision.”

Over the decades, urban sprawl in the county has bulldozed natural landscapes and reduced habitat for many plants and animals. It has also provided affordable homes for families and allowed people to enjoy rural living a relatively short drive away from grocery stores, hospitals and town centers.

Long before government restrictions came into place, fur traders, loggers, ranchers and miners dramatically affected the backcountry. Wildfires were attributed to overgrazed lands, and mining of gold and other precious metals threatened to pollute rivers and creeks.

By the late 1880s, government officials recognized the need to better manage the forest, specifically to safeguard sources of drinking water there. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt consolidated existing protected lands and created the Cleveland National Forest.

Once spanning nearly 2 million acres, the forest now covers about 440,000 acres, stretching in a patchwork from state Route 94 in San Diego to state Route 91 in Orange County. Regulations allow for a variety of recreational uses in designated areas, including hiking, camping and off-roading. The forest also hosts a number of commercial uses, such as cellphone towers and electric utility lines.

But for the most part, the territory is left as open space and natural habitat.

In the early 1990s, a group of backcountry environmentalists successfully spearheaded the Forest Conservation Initiative, which limited development on more than 71,000 acres of privately held land within the national forest.

When the measure sunset in 2010, elected county officials had been dealing for more than a decade with disgruntled residents who wanted the option to subdivide their parcels so they could build more structures on them. In response, county leaders are moving forward with a proposal to update the zoning for private lands within the forest.

With more than half of the plan’s envisioned higher density concentrated just east of the unincorporated town of Alpine, efforts have in part responded to residents who feel squeezed by urban development on the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians reservation.

As the reservation has built out its casino, nearby homeowners have lamented the loss of a once-quiet lifestyle. Perhaps ironically, many residents now believe their best hope to escape the lights, noise and ongoing construction in the area may be to allow increased density so they can offload land to commercial developers.

Leaders of the tribe declined to comment for this story.

Two characters central to this rezoning fight, Duncan McFetridge and Larry Freeland, offer unique perspectives on differing priorities in the backcountry. Both moved to East County decades ago, attracted by the area’s natural beauty. Now the land-use proposal has set them on divergent paths.

Duncan McFetridge, a woodworker in Descanso, is a major voice for backcountry conservation.

— Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune

DUNCAN MCFETRIDGE

When Duncan McFetridge moved to rural East County about 30 years ago, he had little idea that he’d become one of the region’s foremost advocates for open space.

Over the years, the carpenter by trade and lifelong student of philosophy has taken on many of the county’s most powerful government planning agencies, launching two nonprofits and winning a series of legal battles that have curbed urban sprawl.

Kicking off this second career as a conservationist, McFetridge championed a ballot measure in the early ’90s called the Forest Conservation Initiative, which dramatically curtailed development on private lands within the Cleveland National Forest.

In a move that would presage his dedication to hard-nosed environmentalism, he took out a mortgage on his bucolic Descanso home to help fund the effort. In later campaigns, he would spend as much as half a million dollars from an inheritance to try to contain urban development.

“I’m in love with the beautiful,” said McFetridge, sitting in his dining room-office with walls seemingly made of books. “Money, for whatever reason, it’s meaningless to me.

“Other foundations all focus on fundraising. While they’re out fighting for grants, guess what we’re doing here? We’re literally on the battlefield.”

The Forest Conservation Initiative’s stipulations sunset in 2010, and county officials have since proposed upzoning certain areas inside the national forest. The change would mark the end of an era for those who’ve toiled to limit development in the backcountry.

“The forest initiative was the best thing that ever happened,” said Jeff Rozendal, initially a Descanso and now San Diego-based chimney sweep who partnered with McFetridge on the initiative and other campaigns. “It’s the only thing that has worked. You keep politicians out of it, and you’ve got a chance to preserve things.”

McFetridge and his allies waged two other campaigns related to preservation of the forest, but those measures failed at the ballot box.

Today, he vows to fight the county’s upzoning plan to the end. Asked if he would file a lawsuit to block the proposed density increases, the Descanso woodworker responded without hesitation in a high-pitched tone: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.”

He’d have to scrape together the funds. His nonprofits typically generate less than $50,000 a year in revenue, with his and one other paid staff member’s modest salaries often getting cannibalized by the groups’ expenses.

“I’m adorned, as the Chinese say, with poverty,” McFetridge said, sipping well water out of a wine glass.

The usually lean years have alternated with big fundraising efforts for specific campaigns, such as in the early 2000s when he and others pushed in vain for a ballot measure that would’ve create a so-called “urban-growth boundary.”

McFetridge said this model of operating on a shoestring budget hasn’t held him back. Rather, he said, refusing to take money from government agencies helps preserve the ideological pureness of his campaigns.

“All these groups beg for grants, and then they have ties,” he said. “And I found out very quickly that money is rotten here. I see it everywhere. Everyone gets compromised. So I said f— you people. I’m going to be free.”

At 75 with a white beard and a ponytail, he flutters about his property talking metaphysically about everything from the Buddha-like state of his Guinea hens to an impressive sculpture of a frog he carved from an enormous boulder on a hill in his backyard.

He adores his forest, but he remarks that he’s also a “connoisseur of cities.” He especially admires Paris, Seattle and San Francisco. He thinks the city of San Diego has potential, but he’s rather blunt with his assessment of its current state.

“Plato says the most beautiful thing on the face of this earth is a well-run city because it is the work of the city to educate the citizens,” he said. “Here we take a city and make it a market place to make the citizens worse.”

This all translates back to his distrust of many local government officials. Specifically, he fears the county’s plan for upzoning private lands within the national forest is harbinger for much unseen development to come.

Under the current proposal, more than half of the increased density allowed would be contained in an area east of Alpine. As the Viejas tribe has built out a casino and mall, local residents have asked that their properties be rezoned to conform to this adjacent urbanization.

McFetridge said he has sympathy for some residents who have seen their rural setting succumb to increased traffic and noise from ongoing construction. But he worries the county’s proposal sets a dangerous precedent for future upzoning throughout the backcountry.

If the proposal goes through, zoning in the area outside of Alpine wouldn’t be set in stone. Under a yet-to-be-funded study, county planners are expected to assess whether further density would be needed in the area to help pay for basic services such as new roads and water and sewer pipes.

Asked how significant the county’s plan would be for San Diego’s woodland areas, McFetridge responded rather solemnly with a laconic summation: “Urbanization is in conflict with forest values.”

Forest at the forefront

Leading the push against a proposal to increase development in parts of the Cleveland National Forest is just the latest crusade for Descanso resident Duncan McFetridge and two nonprofit groups he co-founded.

Save Our Forest and Ranchlands and the Cleveland National Forest Foundation are hardly household names in San Diego County. But during the past two decades, they have played a central role in controversies ranging from backcountry conservation to climate change to the environmental effects of widening Interstate 5.

Here’s a look at the issues they’ve taken on:

1990: Save Our Forest and Ranchlands, or SOFAR, was launched by McFetridge and nearly a dozen of his like-minded neighbors. The group’s mission is to prevent efforts by San Diego County to allow development on land in and around the Cleveland National Forest.

1992: SOFAR blocked in court a county zoning update for the Central Mountain area of East County, which is within the Cleveland National Forest and Cuyamaca State Park. A developer had proposed to build a 125-home community on more than 700 acres known as Roberts Ranch. Eventually, the forest service bought the ranch land.

1993: A citizen-approved ballot measure called the Forest Conservation Initiative, drafted by McFetridge and SOFAR, changed the minimum lot size on private lands within the Cleveland forest but outside of backcountry towns from as little as four acres to 40. McFetridge took out a mortgage on his home to pay for signature gatherers.

1995: McFetridge and others created the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, which aims to preserve open space in the forest.

1996: SOFAR prevailed in a lawsuit that forced the county to implement minimum lot sizes on nearly 200,000 acres of agricultural preserve lands. Following the ruling, the group continued to wrangle with the county for several years over the proper density for those lands.

1997: SOFAR stopped two developments in court, including a project that could have cut off the last mountain-lion corridors connecting the Santa Rosa Mountain Range in Orange County and Palomar Mountain in San Diego County. With support from other groups, SOFAR also halted a sizable RV park planned for Descanso.

1998: SOFAR failed to win passage of a ballot measure called the Rural Heritage and Watershed Initiative, which would have created an urban-growth boundary and increased minimum lot sizes in some unincorporated areas to 40 or 80 acres.

2002: SOFAR reached an agreement with the county for zoning on roughly 200,000 acres of agricultural preserve lands that called for a 40-acre minimum lot size. The state attorney general at the time, Bill Lockyer, had joined the lawsuit in support of SOFAR.

2004: For the second time, SOFAR failed to get voters to approve a ballot measure restricting development on thousands of acres of unincorporated land. The Rural Lands Initiative would have imposed minimum lot sizes of 40, 80 or 160 acres on nearly 700,000 acres in the county.

2007: After threatening litigation, SOFAR reached a settlement agreement with the city of San Diego over its Downtown Mobility Plan, which lays out the transportation plan for the city’s urban core. McFetridge and others argued that the plan needed to focus more heavily on transit, bicycle and pedestrian options.

2011: The Forest Conservation Initiative sunset, prompting county officials to begin looking at updating land-use designations for more than 71,000 acres of private lands within the Cleveland National Forest.

2012: The Cleveland National Forest Foundation prevailed in a lawsuit against the San Diego Association of Governments concerning the municipal planning agency’s regional transportation plan for the county. The foundation said the agency failed to properly account for state-mandated reductions to greenhouse gases. The case is now pending at the California Supreme Court and is expected to have broad implications.

2013: The foundation sued Caltrans over its proposed expansion of the Interstate 5 corridor from La Jolla to Camp Pendleton, which would add four new express lanes. The case is expected to yield a settlement this year.

2016: The foundation has threatened to sue the county over its proposed upzoning of thousands of acres of private lands within the Cleveland National Forest.

Larry Freeland, who lives across from Viejas Casino east of Alpine, supports the up-zoning proposal.

— Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune

LARRY FREELAND

When Larry Freeland bought a small patch of land just east of Alpine about 37 years ago, the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians’ reservation down the road didn’t make much noise.

A decade later, the native tribe put in a bingo parlor, and traffic quickly started to pick up along the road that Freeland lives on.

Today, the Viejas reservation features a large casino, an outlet mall, an outdoor food court and several 24-hour parking lots. Cars and buses routinely roar up and down the once-quite country road just north of Interstate 8.

“You got car alarms going all night long and people who sit in their cars and turn their bump-bump music up,” the 62-year-old said. “I mean, it’s not a residential area anymore. It really isn’t.”

Freeland’s not your typical cranky homeowner frustrated with loud neighbors. In fact, he’s not bitter with the tribe at all. He even said he voted for the statewide ballot proposition in 2000 that allowed Indian gaming to expand.

“They were wrongly treated in history, so I supported them,” he said. “What can you do?”

Still, Freeland and others in the area are desperate to change their situation. Since the 1990s, the county of San Diego has faced pressure from landowners like him to allow greater development that would fit with the commercial growth on the reservation.

“It would hedge our bet in the future about being able to get a reasonable price for the property,” said Jim Phillips, a 61-year-old homeowner who lives across the street from the casino’s parking lots. “The property is no longer desirable for someone to live and raise a family.”

For a long time, the county’s hands were tied. The folks east of Alpine live within the boundary of the Cleveland National Forest, where a citizen’s initiative had for nearly a decade capped development to one lot for at least every 40 acres.

With long hair and a graying handlebar mustache, Freeland’s blue eyes sparkle from under a cowboy hat as he explains how he would’ve already fled the area if he could have found someone to buy his property for the right price.

“Worst-case scenario, now that the tribe’s this far out, I take a big loss and I get the heck out of here,” he said.

On roughly 4.5 acres, Freeland and his wife own a home as well as a western-style novelty shop called the Lost Trails Trading Post. The funky little store sells clothes, hats, old movie posters and other period-appropriate accoutrement. Next to the store, Freeland has built three 1820s-style tent cabins that are open for public viewing.

When Freeland’s not hawking cowboy merchandise or giving tours of his cabins, he’s working as an actor in small-budget western movies and television shows. Recently he played Wild Bill Hickok, he explains proudly, adding that he’s also performed with a Lakeside-based performance group called The Hole in the Wall Gang.

While the increased traffic from the casino and mall has brought him a few more customers, he’d have to expand his commercial business or sell to a developer to really capitalize on the growth — neither of which are a viable options unless the county updates the land use for the area.

“I had one guy very interested, but everyone wanted to see the final zoning,” he said. “Developers want to do something here.”

After the Forest Conservation Initiative sunset in 2010, the county proceeded with a plan to rezone thousands of acres within the forest. The proposal would specifically permit mixed-use commercial development east of the Viejas reservation and up to one residential lot per acre on lands south of I-8.

This could be a bonanza for homeowners in the region, especially those willing to sell to their property. For those who stay on, density could bring amenities such as municipal water and sewer lines from Alpine, another fire station and a high school.

“It gives us a little (security) if we ever want to sell in the future,” said Jim Thomson, 66, who moved to the area in 1999 and has six children. “Nobody wants to buy a house across from all this excitement.”

But it’s far from a done deal. The proposal has infuriated conservationists, who have threatened to challenge the zoning changes in court — fearing a slippery slope of development in years to come.

If Freeland can sell his property, he said he would consider moving up to Grass Valley in Northern California and retire near his two children. But he’s not ruling out enlarging his commercial enterprise here.

“The only way to protect myself, my property rights, my monetary investment, is to turn it commercial,” he said.

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SACRAMENTO (CBS / AP) – Spurred on by a lack of affordable housing, rising house prices and persistent homelessness, California lawmakers on Thursday pushed ahead with the second of two measures aimed at breaking local zoning ordinances.

Sponsored by Senate Leader Toni Atkins and backed by Parliament Speaker Anthony Rendon, both Democrats, Senate Law 9 would make it easier to build smaller second homes on what is now single-family homes. This can be up to four units, such as maisonettes or houses with attached residential units, if the property is divided into two equal parcels under the bill.

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The goal is to “open the door to more families to realize their version of the California dream,” said Atkins, “whether that means building a home for an older parent, creating a new source of income, the first home too or to be welcomed in a new neighborhood. “

The move largely bypasses local consent, although Atkins previously added opportunities for local governments to block construction that could endanger public safety or health, or be carried out by housing speculators. Those who apply for the loss splitting must swear that they want to live in one of the residential units as their main residence for at least three years.

It cleared the 80-member assembly with a non-partisan 45-19 vote.

The bill “will expedite duplexes and property divisions in areas designated for single-family homes,” objected Republican MP Janet Nguyen, who said she voted no but will be quarantined after testing positive for the coronavirus.

The convention on Monday passed Senate Bill 10, a related bill by Senator Scott Wiener that would make it easier for local governments to rededicate neighborhoods near public transportation for up to 10 residential units.

That bill came out 41 to 9 with no votes left, despite proponents saying it was recently amended to make it optional for local governments.

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“Legalizing small residential buildings near thoroughfares and in urban catchment areas will reduce environmental impact and reduce climate pollution,” said Brian Hanlon, executive director of advocacy group California YIMBY, in a statement.

Advocacy group California Community Builders argued that the measures will narrow an “ever-widening racial wealth gap in California,” where more than 60% of whites own their homes, compared with 35% of blacks and about 40% of Latinos.

But several Sacramento neighborhood groups said the bills “encourage large financial organizations to own home with an increasing percentage of lower and middle-class residents becoming long-term renters.”

The measures undermine both local control and environmental protection, they claim.

Both bills are going back to the Senate for final vote before the legislature is adjourned on September 10 for the year.

The Sacramento City Council is in the process of making the capital one of the first in the country to abolish traditional single-family zoning. The cities of Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis have issued similar ordinances in recent years. The state of Oregon has passed a law that removes traditional single-family zoning nationwide.

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