Less than 70 years ago, racist laws allowed for legal discrimination against people of color. These legal covenants prohibited Black people, among others, from purchasing, leasing, or occupying property. And that led to segregated neighborhoods.
Although such policies have been illegal since 1964, they’re still written into many official real estate documents like property deeds.
While that language isn’t legally binding, it’s still a problem in the Bay Area, especially in Marin County. According to a recent studydone by the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, Marin hosts six out of the top 10 most racially segregated cities in the Bay.
The Marin County Board of Supervisors is taking measures to address this property racism. In May it agreed to support the Marin County Restrictive Covenant Project. That project works to change the language in property deeds, and encourages everyone who owns a home that was built before 1971 to check the Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions section of their deed.