Your home may have a racist restrictive covenant. This team will identify them in Whatcom
Your home or property in Whatcom County may have a restrictive covenant that says only white people are allowed to own or occupy it. But a new law aims to help property owners fix that.
A state law that went into effect last summer will identify any racially restrictive covenants on homes in Washington, including Whatcom County.
Covenants and deed restrictions are being reviewed by teams from the University of Washington and Eastern Washington University, as directed by House Bill 1335, which took effect in July 2021.
They will identify restrictions that include exclusionary language on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and other protected classes. The bill also sets up a process to notify the property owner and provide the owner with options on how to remove the racist language.
Restrictive covenants were placed on homes and properties throughout Washington in the first half of the 20th Century. The covenants included language that singled out people of specific races or ethnicities who were prohibited from owning or occupying the property.
Such covenants have been found in Whatcom County in the Edgemoor, Columbia and King Mountain neighborhoods, according to Matt Goldman, a real estate broker with Compass Real Estate. The covenants would include specific restrictions that said the property owner and their heirs “agrees that said premises shall be owned and occupied only by persons of the White Race,” according to several Whatcom County property records that have racially restrictive covenants.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racially restrictive covenants could not be enforced. In 1968, the federal Fair Housing Act made it illegal to have covenants that discriminated on the basis of race, color, religion or nationality. Washington state passed a companion law in 1969 making racially restrictive covenants void.
But University of Washington Professor of History James N. Gregory said the restrictions are a “shadow over the city map,” whether it’s Bellingham, Seattle or elsewhere. Gregory, who is a co-founder of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, said these racist covenants were a powerful legal mechanism of segregation across the country. The racially restrictive covenants became popular in the 1920s through the 1940s, so neighborhoods that were created during that time are the most likely to have these kinds of covenants, he said.
“The residents of every city and town need to think about how segregation has been practiced, how discrimination is and has been practiced. I just think that’s part of our duty as citizens to understand that part of our history, because it’s shaping lives today. If we pretend that it isn’t there, that’s very hurtful. I want people to pay attention, and I think this law is helping to enable that,” Gregory said. “We should know about this. This matters, because it’s not just history, it’s still shaping the present.”
Whatcom covenants
Gregory is part of the team from UW that is tasked with finding racially restrictive covenants in western Washington, including in Whatcom County.
The Whatcom County Auditor’s Office is currently digitizing property records and has done so back to the 1960s, according to Chief Deputy Auditor Stacy Henthorn. The office is currently working on digitizing the rest of the records, which are on microfilm, that date back to before statehood, Henthorn said.
Once that process is complete, Gregory and his team will begin analyzing the records to identify racially restrictive covenants on properties in Whatcom County. He said he hopes to start that process several months from now.
After the properties that have racist covenants are identified, Gregory and his team will contact the property owners and provide them with options on how to modify or remove the restrictive covenants. Gregory said he hopes to include volunteers in the project who can help verify the restrictions and property information, creating a map of the racially restrictive covenants.
“Our Legislature over the years has been really concerned about this and sees it as a chance to try and, we can’t make amends, but at least clarify the dimensions of this horror imposed on people of color, limiting their access to property. The limitations on access to the ability to buy and sell homes turned directly into a limitation on the ability to accumulate wealth. … So it’s not just about residences and where you live. It really goes into very fundamental ways and means of economic and social inequality, all of it kind of deriving from this same set of segregationist practices,” Gregory said. “So I think there’s a lot of goodwill behind this, and the sense that we can’t let another century go by without realizing the racist crimes of the past.”
Restrictons’ impacts
Kena Greer Brashear, who has been in real estate for more than 25 years, said when a racially restrictive covenant would come across her desk, it would make her sick to her stomach. She would just want to move past it, but as of late, she said she has become more intentional about looking at it.
Greer Brashear, who is the first Black female designated broker in Whatcom or Skagit county, said it’s time for change.
“We’re in 2022. It feels like this is something that, on a bigger level, we should be able to remove it,” Greer Brashear said. “The language is just a reminder of exclusionary practices in our country, just thinking about Jim Crow laws and the dark past that we’ve been through.”
Greer Brashear said she’s come across racially restrictive covenants quite a few times during her career in real estate, and said that they were common in sundown towns, which would require any person of color to be out of the city limits by nightfall or risk being jailed. Bellingham was a sundown town and so it makes sense there would be racially restrictive covenants on properties, Greer Brashear said.
Greer Brashear said she tries to use the racially restrictive covenants as an educational tool for her children. She said most often title companies will redact the racist language, but at an open house she did recently with her oldest son, who is also in real estate, the language had not been redacted and it came as a shock to her son. She said while it’s hard and unsettling to come across those restrictions, she was able to use the moment as an educational experience.
“Truthfully, it would be my biggest dream to have it just all go away. We already have enough reminders of our dark history and to have that possibly casually pop through for a person of color living in a neighborhood, we don’t need to relieve all of that pain of the past,” she said.
Greer Brashear said people of color have been through a lot in their lives and have all faced some level of discrimination. She said she wants the racially restrictive covenants to be removed so that we can get into the present day and so her kids don’t have to live through what she has had to.
“I just want people to be aware that it’s there,” Greer Brashear said. “So I just want change, I do. We need to change and we need to be aware of people around us. … A lot of people don’t even know that this exists, and that’s the thing. It’s just time to go in the right direction. The language and reading the language is just a reminder of all the exclusionary practices in our country and everything that we’ve been through.”
Remove racist rules
There are currently two ways under Washington state law for property owners to modify or remove the racist restrictive covenants on their properties.
One way, which has been a legal remedy since 2019, is to fill out a restrictive covenant modification form with the county auditor’s office. The modification allows a property owner to update the property records and will include a notice on the property’s land title records that the racially restrictive covenant is void and unenforceable. It will legally strike, but does not delete, the language from the historical record, according to the county auditor’s office.
Another way, which was passed as part of Bill 1335, allows a property owner to petition their county’s Superior Court for a court order to remove the language from the property’s title. It requires someone to pay a filing fee for the document and get a lawyer to help them with the process.
Goldman, the local real estate agent, has taken it upon himself to help property owners across Whatcom County strike or remove the racist language from their titles. Goldman, who has lived in Whatcom County for the past nine years, said he first became attuned to racially restrictive covenants in July 2020. He later found there was something property owners could do to remove the racist language and he began helping property owners go through the process after they contacted him.
So far, Goldman has helped 11 Whatcom County property owners fill out the paperwork for a racially restrictive covenant modification and he has around 56 more he’s working with. Goldman said it takes time to trace back a property owner’s record to the original title with the racist restriction on it, because it requires him going into the auditor’s office and searching through records on microfilm.
Goldman said it was his goal to make the process as easy as possible for people to identify whether their property has these restrictions and to do something about removing the racist covenants.
“It’s something that has been on our minds as a Realtor group. … Once I found that you could take action on this, I felt like it is our responsibility to take action on this. Real estate is my chosen profession, I love it and I love Bellingham. But real estate has a pretty sordid past with racism in our country and I feel like we all as Realtors need to take steps to help remedy that and help heal and help move forward with inclusivity and equity for everybody,” Goldman said.
Goldman said the racially restrictive covenants are hurtful language that exists and compared them to having a racist monument in your yard that you weren’t allowed to remove. Goldman said it’s a dark part of our country’s history, but it’s important we do something about it because Bellingham is growing and it’s important for the community to grow in ways that are inclusive and filled with equity.
Goldman said it’s not the current homeowner’s fault that the racially restrictive covenants are there, but it is the homeowner’s responsibility to now take care of it. He said by homeowners taking action to remove the racist restrictions, it moves Whatcom County into the future.
“We’re a progressive community that’s looking ahead and looking towards what our community can be,” Goldman said.
Gregory, the history professor, echoed Goldman’s and Greer Brashear’s statements. He said the effects of these racist covenants can still be seen today.
“The restrictions don’t permanently prevent desegregation but they certainly have made it harder and the shadow over an area tends to reproduce lingering effects that keep diverse populations from fully participating in those areas,” he said.
Bellingham was 84.7% white, 1% Black, 1.4% American Indian or Alaska Native and 4.6% Asian, according to 2019 U.S. Census estimates. Whatcom County as a whole was 82.1% white, 0.8% Black, 2.3% American Indian or Alaska Native and 3.8% Asian, the U.S. Census estimates show.
Gregory said the attention and effort in finding and removing the racially restrictive covenants is important because it illuminates ongoing racial inequality and discrimination.
“Fact is that this is not yesterday’s problem,” he said. “We just have to do that and just have to keep that in front of people to try and work on these bad behaviors that are so hurtful to people who are not white.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
