Is Historic Preservation Just Another Government Regulation? The Answer May Surprise You
How many times have you heard the story of someone who just wanted to fix up their old house but the headache of regulations caused them to give up, resulting in the demolition of the home?
One of the arguments against historic commissions in the Wildwoods is that people don’t want additional government regulations telling them what to do with their property. A valid point, but think of the current situation in the Wildwoods where all of the existing government regulations are oriented towards the destruction of older homes.
Let’s take a case of a small one-story Wildwood cottage built in the 1920s. A home like this is still common in Wildwood and is assessed at around $100K. Assume the land is 60K of the value and the structure is 40K. With government regulations for coastal areas, if you make repairs on a house that exceed 50% of the structure’s value, then you are mandated to lift the house above FEMA’s base flood elevation.
If your home needs a major system replaced such as plumbing, electrical, or HVAC, you could easily imagine hitting 20K of work. So as an owner of an affordable home, you are looking at a huge additional cost to lift your house. Once you are lifting the house, you are now dealing with a major construction project to build out a new foundation along with possibly adding a story or two. Since there are no historic districts in Wildwood, your construction project faces more government regulations of bringing your old home up to modern code which can be extremely difficult and expensive. If the owner has the funds, they probably demolish the home to rebuild from scratch. Or the owner sells the house and the new buyer demolishes and builds a more expensive home pushing out another one of the working class homes that made Wildwood what it is today.
Small homes similar to these may be in danger of demolition due to government regulations.
There are challenges of living in a coastal environment, but if the government sets the bar so high through flood and building regulations to live in these areas, then it’s clear why the working and middle class are being pushed out of these areas. The Jersey Shore has radically transformed over the last few decades from a mix of incomes to being dominated by wealthy 2nd homeowners. It only takes a short drive up to Avalon or Stone Harbor to see all the small cottages and bungalows now replaced with McMansions.
Historic preservationists advocate for regulations that help owners of older homes repair their home instead of driving them to demolish or sell their homes. The Wildwoods are not Cape May and historic regulations in the Wildwoods would not be concerned with the type of shutters or paint used on your house. The goal of the Wildwoods historic regulations is to prevent demolitions by grandfathering in older homes so they don’t have to be burdened with a crush of government regulations to do necessary repair and maintenance projects. Historic home regulations will help keep the quaint and affordable homes standing and keep the Wildwoods from looking like every other generic place along the Shore.
We’ll never live in a world with zero regulations and when you own property there will always be some rules you’ll need to follow as a homeowner. So if we’re going to have some regulations on our property, why not support positive regulations that are geared towards keeping people in their homes as opposed to the existing government regulations that are all oriented towards the destruction of older homes?
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