By Bruce Coons / SOHO Newsletter / March – April 2025
For retirees and those approaching retirement, managing the costs of homeownership can be a daunting challenge, especially in a city like San Diego, where housing prices and property taxes continue to rise. The Mills Act, a groundbreaking preservation program that has helped thousands of California historic property owners for more than 50 years, offers a practical solution that benefits current and future retirees, while preserving the city’s historic character.
By providing significant property tax reductions to owners of designated historic residences, the state Mills Act makes it financially feasible for retirees to remain in their homes, to maintain them, and to enjoy their retirement without the fear of being priced out and forced to move. For those planning for retirement, the locally administered program provides a clear path to long-term housing stability, helping individuals secure their future.
One of the biggest hurdles retirees face is living on a fixed income. While property values and taxes may skyrocket, retirement incomes often remain stable, creating a financial squeeze. For retirees, this ax reduction can mean the difference between staying in their beloved homes or being forced to sell due to rising costs. The Mills Act offers meaningful relief in reducing property taxes, thereby creating a sense of certainty and security for current and future retirees.
For example, consider a retiree or soon-to-be retiree who owns a historic home valued at $800,000. Under a typical Mills Act contract, their property taxes might be reduced by approximately $4,000—savings that can help cover essential expenses for home repairs, restoration, or medical needs, allowing them to age in place with dignity and security.
Beyond benefiting individual homeowners, the program helps sustain the integrity of San Diego’s historic neighborhoods and historic districts. Without this incentive, many of these homes could fall into neglect, face redevelopment, or even demolition, permanently altering the character and affordability of these livable communities.
Furthermore, the Mills Act also supports broader community goals like housing affordability and sustainability. Retirees who remain in their homes through this program help preserve naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). Their residences, typically smaller and more modest than newly built developments or multi-story towers, offer an alternative to costly high-density projects.
Preserving existing homes also benefits the environment. Maintaining and retrofitting older structures reduces landfill waste by tons, avoids the emissions tied to new construction, and utilizes the embodied carbon already invested in these buildings. Simply by caring for their homes, retirees who participate in the Mills Act contribute to San Diego’s sustainability goals.
This visionary program is more than an investment in preservation—it’s an investment in people. By making homeownership more affordable for retirees, it allows them to remain active members of their communities while maintaining their quality of life.
You may know that the City of San Diego’s ongoing Preservation and Progress initiative (which you can learn about online) is poised to revise and possibly eliminate historic preservation policies and ordinances, including the highly successful Mills Act contracts.
The Mills Act program was included in a staff status report on Preservation and Progress at the Historical Resources Board meeting in February 2025. Kelley Stanco, deputy director of the City Planning Department, noted that staff’s recent benchmarking survey, which compared preservation policies and programs across California, found that San Diego has the second-highest number of most Mills Act contracts, behind Los Angeles. Given that San Diego is the state’s second-largest city, this is hardly surprising.
Please read this letter from an 83-year-old owner of a beloved 1922 home in Mission Hills, urging city officials to protect the Mills Act and our shared heritage. It reads in part: I am “willing to preserve history for the future (typically at a significant cost).… I have lived in many San Diego neighborhoods but find this one the friendliest and most caring of all of them. I am hopeful I can remain and do not have to move away because of the cost of remaining.”
If you too value the Mills Act program and its role in supporting San Diego’s retirees and future retirees, please join the retired homeowner and write your own strong message to make your voice heard. Submit your comments through the city’s Preservation and Progress online portal today and help protect a popular program that safeguards both our city’s rich architectural heritage and our valuable elders. Thank you!
Bruce Coons is the SOHO Executive Director
This article by Bruce Coons is a counter to Richard Flores OpEd piece in today’s U-T calling for an end to the Mills Act.
Most people with a historic home have lived there for twenty plus years or inherited it. Their property taxes, thanks to Prop 13, are pretty low. If, like your example, someone has a house valued at 800,000, their property taxes are probably under 5 k a year if not less. I would think that the advantage that you might get from a reduced tax would be less than the economic disadvantages of having a home with a historic designation. Think Red Robin, Red Roost.
Bruce Coons article, The Mills Act: A Lifeline for Retirees, underscores one of the many advantages of preserving older housing stock. These older houses are affordable, even after minor repairs, such as painting and plumbing upgrades, because the property taxes have been controlled by the 1978 Proposition 13. When developers tear down and build new, they have to pay full property taxes that skyrocket the monthly expenses and that drives working class families, seniors on fixed incomes, and young people out of the older city core. Renting historically designated properties is a wonderful investment in our City. Preserve the past and save the future.
Regarding the letter from the 83 yo homeowner. You’re telling me an 83 year old spends their life savings on a house ($2.1M in 2024) and now wants to get a tax break through the Mills Act because they are on a fixed income? Unbelievable.
Karen, where does the author of the letter (that we did not publish) state his life savings was $2.1 M?
THis whole article is a mess and really stresses my patience. The person whose letter is mentioned and linked in the above article bought their home for $2.1 million dollars and apparently is crying poverty when she either bought it all cash or took out a mortgage of over 10K a month?
$2.1 million dollars is not naturally occuring affordable housing nor is the home actually historic, it’s just an older home and despite paying $2.1 million dollars wants the Prop 13 benefits that many of us have earned while she was away from San Diego for 30 years. Unreal!