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HOA Community Checkin: The Legacy of Racially Restrictive Covenants was started many years ago.

Some may even still have that language embedded within the Covenants

On June 14, 2020, a PBS program article was posted by KCET.org, it discusses how restrictive covenants were put in place to further back up the systems that were put in place that directly affected the marginalized.



After the Great Depression, the federal government-backed mortgage lending as a route to homeownership and wealth accumulation, but redlined minority communities. White flight to suburbia left the urban core starved for investment and government services. Predatory lending and the 2010 foreclosure crisis further depressed rates of homeownership in the inner cities. Today, housing deeds still bear restrictive language such as “no lot in the said tract shall at any time be lived upon by a person whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race.” The restrictions have lost their legal standing but their spirit lingers in more nuanced ways.


I hope that HOA leaders, particularly in older neighborhoods, are reviewing their CC&Rs for language that could be updated. This may be the best time to update.



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