Berkeley, a city where a mid-century smoke shop could theoretically be declared a protected historic landmark, has quietly made it harder to slap that designation on buildings. And for anyone who cares about property rights and housing supply, this is a rare win worth noting.

For years, historic landmarking in the East Bay's most progressive enclave has been weaponized — not to preserve genuinely significant architecture, but to block development, freeze neighborhoods in amber, and hand veto power to whoever shows up to a community meeting with a sufficiently romantic story about a building's past. Got a landlord who wants to add units? Just claim the building has "historic character" and watch the process grind to a halt.

The problem isn't preservation itself. Nobody's arguing we should bulldoze the Hearst Mining Building. The problem is when landmarking becomes a tool of convenience — a bureaucratic bat used to swat away housing projects that neighborhoods simply don't want. In a region where the median home price makes your eyes water and the housing shortage is measured in hundreds of thousands of units, every obstructionist tool matters.

Berkeley tightening its landmarking criteria means property owners get a slightly better shake, and developers don't have to play whack-a-mole with last-minute historic designations every time they file permits. It means the city is, perhaps accidentally, acknowledging that not every structure built before 1970 is sacred.

Of course, this is still Berkeley. Don't expect the floodgates to open. The city has approximately nine thousand other ways to slow-walk development, from design review committees to environmental impact studies to vibes-based objections at planning meetings. But trimming one tool from the NIMBY toolkit? We'll take it.

The Bay Area's housing crisis wasn't built in a day — it was built one bad policy at a time, across dozens of cities, over decades. Unwinding it happens the same way. Berkeley raising the bar on historic landmarking is a small step, but it's a step in the right direction. Now do zoning reform.