![]() ![]() Still, racist language remains on the books in individual property deeds in California and the rest of the country. That made it illegal to discriminate in housing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.Ī federal version of the law followed five years later. ![]() Supreme Court in 1948, they continued to be used in California until the passage of the 1963 California Fair Housing Act. Though racist covenants were declared unenforceable by the U.S. The practice of racial covenants began in the late 19th-century and was used across the country to keep racial, ethnic and sometimes religious minorities from buying or renting land in specific areas of a given community. “I knew about these kinds of covenants, but it felt really weird that it was on the house that I was purchasing and that this had been buried in the books for so long here in Northern California,” Lindi said. “No person of African, Japanese, Chinese or of any Mongolian descent shall be allowed to purchase, own, lease or occupy said real property or any part thereof except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a race or nationality restricted hereby when employed by the owner or tenant.” Under a section of the deed that included restrictions against conducting business from the property or owning pig pens and chickens, there was this: They also worry the new law will make it harder for researchers to pin down information about racial covenants in the future.Įve Lindi wasn’t prepared for the notice she received from her title company in May as she closed on the purchase of her home in the Santa Rosa Junior College neighborhood. “That’s no longer the case.”Ĭritics fault the new law for failing to include funding to map, not just index, the covenants. Under the previous law, “Only someone with a property interest could record a document that modified property restrictions, even if it was only to remove illegal discriminatory language,” Proto said. There also are homes in rural West Sonoma County, including in the Mirabel Heights neighborhood and the redwood-lined Green Valley Road near Forestville, that bear racial covenants in their property deeds.įarther north, a deed dated 1930 for property in the Del Rio Woods neighborhood east of Healdsburg prevented any “person except those of the Caucasian race” from living there.Īssembly Bill 1466, approved in July, requires that county officials identify and remove racial covenants from their records. That includes homes in the Madison Square subdivision, Petaluma’s first suburban development, which was built in 1946 near the present-day Whole Foods grocery store on East Washington Street near Payran Street. Jackie Toledo.Deva Proto, Sonoma County’s clerk, recorder, assessor and registrar of voters, said she has no estimate of how many Sonoma County property deeds may have restrictive covenants in them.Ī search of county records and interviews with local homeowners indicate they are spread throughout the county, primarily in neighborhoods built in the earlier half of the 20th century. I think he would have made an excellent clerk, and it would have been a seamless transition, but he doesn’t like politics and wasn’t comfortable campaigning.”įrank said she’s heard only second-hand talk about any other potential candidates.Īs Democrats look to Hillsborough County in hope of flipping Republican state House seats, a secretive, a South Florida-based political group with ties to Andrew Gillum has been sending out mailers targeting Tampa Republican state Rep. But she has been uncertain about her political future, and many Republicans expect her to run for another countywide commissioner’s seat instead.Ĭlerk Pat Frank, a Bakke supporter, said she is “very disappointed. She filed last year after initially filing for and then abandoning a race for a countywide commissioner seat, and moved her campaign funds to the clerk’s race. On the Republican side, county Commissioner Sandra Murman has been filed as a candidate since June 2018, but may not actually run. With Doug Bakke announcing this week he’s leaving the race for Hillsborough County Clerk of Court, Kevin Beckner (above) is the only Democrat, and possibly the only candidate, in the race.
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