Racist housing policies actively disenfranchised people of color and other minoritized communities over the decades, and their legacies continue today. These policies, which include exclusionary zoning, redlining, blockbusting, unfair lending practices, racist housing covenants, and others, prevented African American, Asian, and other racial/ethnic groups from living in certain neighborhoods, creating fractured and racially segregated communities across the United States. Racist housing covenants, in particular, remain a largely underexplored form of institutional housing discrimination. The MRC project tells the story of how racist covenants have, and continue to, make it difficult for communities of color to secure fair housing and achieve equal opportunity. We outline and briefly explain three grounded examples that illustrate the ongoing effects of racist covenants and other forms of institutional housing discrimination. 1. Racial Wealth Gap According to researchers at the U.S. Federal Reserve , the median wealth of White families was $188,200 in 2019, compared to $24,100 and $36,100 for Black and Hispanic families, respectively. This means that “the typical White family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family.” Significant differences in homeownership, otherwise referred to as the “homeownership gap,” is a major contributor to the racial wealth gap. In 2022 , 75 percent of White families owned their own homes, compared to about 45 percent of Black families and 47 percent of Hispanic/Latino families. Housing discrimination, both in the past and present, remains an important contributing factor to the homeownership gap. 2. Racial Segregation Discriminatory housing policies, and racist covenants in particular, were designed by real estate professionals and homeowner associations to prevent Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and other minoritized communities from living in certain neighborhoods. These policies created racially segregated communities across the United States, producing negative outcomes and severe disparities for people of color. Today, where you live determines what community assets are available, directly affecting individual quality of life and opportunity. For example, access to good-paying jobs, highly-ranked public education, healthy air and water, quality medical care, and safe and affordable housing are unfortunately tied to your neighborhood . Therefore, it is important for researchers to better understand the link between racist covenants and inequity. Three recent studies illustrate the importance of this work. First, researchers at the University of Minnesota report that majority-White neighborhoods with racist covenants in Minneapolis-St. Paul have greater access to parks and green space, underscoring issues of environmental justice. Second, scholars at Brookings show that racist covenants and other forms of housing discrimination were central for extracting wealth from Black neighborhoods for decades. Third, researchers in Seattle have found a link between housing discrimination and unequal health outcomes. 3. Emotional Distress Racist covenants are often difficult to remove from CCRs and are therefore common in real estate documents, even today. Individuals must sign off on the CCRs as part of the home purchase closing process, agreeing to the rules and restrictions for a given subdivision or neighborhood. Although racist CCRs are illegal and unenforceable, signing documents with racist CCRs can cause emotional distress, especially for people of color. A recent article in the Arizona Daily Star explains an all-too-common situation in today’s real estate closing process: individuals of color having to sign off on racist CCRs that historically excluded them from living in a given neighborhood.
