ABOUT GUESTS:
Justin Schell
Justin Schell is a librarian at the University of Michigan Library, as well as an audio producer, filmmaker, and visual artist.
Jessica Letaw
At FutureRoot, Jessica Letaw is a community partner of Justice InDeed, documenting and educating the community around racially restrictive covenants on local housing deeds; as well as of the Black Washtenaw Collaboratory. More broadly, Jessica is a housing and racial justice community organizer. She believes in housing for all and inclusive public processes that are welcoming to everyone. She co-hosts the politics + policy podcast Ann Arbor AF, the campaign season webcast Move The Needle, and advocates for housing affordability and abundance through Ann Arbor Housing For All.
RESOURCES:
Special Event: Help Transcribe Racially Restrictive Covenants in Washtenaw County
National Covenants Research Coalition
Justice InDeed’s Mapping of Racial Covenants in Washtenaw County
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: Some argue that racism has largely been eradicated. Well, you need look no further than some of the neighborhoods and communities in Washtenaw County to find racist policy written right into legal documents. It speaks to our history and where we are. I'm David Fair, and welcome to Washtenaw United. It is our weekly exploration of equity and opportunity in our community. Now, in a good number of property deeds in our area, there are racially restrictive covenants written into the document that prevent the sale of a home to a Black person or other minorities. There is a collaborative project working to expose and eradicate such covenants and take the work beyond. It's called Justice InDeed. Our guests today are Justin Schell and Jessica Letaw. And Justin is a co-lead and Jessica is policy committee co-chair for the project. Thanks to both of you for being here! I appreciate it!
Jessica Letaw: It's a delight! Thank you!
Justin Schell: Thanks for having us!
David Fair: Justin, given the most rudimentary explanation of these covenants, perhaps you can better explain what is written into some of the property deeds in Washtenaw County.
Justin Schell: So, these are clauses in property records that basically say "whites only." And often, they're in a list of other kinds of restrictions, how far the house can be set back from the road and whether there can be advertising. And so, these are documents usually from the early 1900s. The first one we found was in 1907, all the way up through the 1960s, that will restrict the property or the entire neighborhood to white folks only or specifically name different groups--Black folks, Jewish folks and other folks. I'd like to say that white folks were scared of. And then, these documents were designed to run with the land. And so, it's not just that they were for this specific house, but that anyone who built a house or lived on this was subject to these restrictions.
David Fair: Now, Jessica, I imagine there's a couple of different reactions to what Justin just said. And if you are white, you're shaking your head saying, "How is this possible in 2024?" And if you're Black, you're probably saying, "Of course this is possible in 2024." How has it segregated Washtenaw County having these kinds of documents in place all those years ago?
Jessica Letaw: I appreciate the question. One of the responses that we get, regardless of race, actually, is why this project matters, given that they were vacated by the Supreme Court as unenforceable in 1948 and rendered entirely illegal by the Civil Rights Fair Housing Legislation Act in 1968. But because these were in place for so long at the birth of most of these neighborhoods and subdivisions, those patterns of racial and ethnic segregation have persisted, in part because we know that racial segregation and income segregation often flow along similar lines. And Washtenaw County in general and Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, in particular, have gotten more and more expensive really since the 1980s or 1990s. So, we've continued to see those persistent patterns of segregation exacerbated by the implementation beginning in the 1970s, going all the way up to today of historic districts and historic neighborhoods that have preserved a lot of these neighborhoods in amber and made it very, very difficult to make any changes to them that would make them more affordable or more accessible.
David Fair: So, history is very important here, isn't it, Justin? I mean, we don't have to look that far back in history to find willful efforts to create whites only districts.
Justin Schell: Yeah. We we can see that throughout the entire county. And this is only a few generations old. We see the latest ones. But an important part of this project is to really reckon with that history and what it means. And so, the specific segregation that we still see today and inequality, but also like how we think about ourselves as a county and, as specific, cities that maybe think of ourselves as exceptional or that this kind of racism wasn't practiced here, that we are part of this sort of liberal myth around this community.
David Fair: Washtenaw United and our conversation with Jessica Letaw and Justin Schell continues on 89 one WEMU. Jessica and Justin are working with the collaborative project called Justice InDeed. And, Jessica, you're, among other things, founder of Building Matters Ann Arbor. You've served on the board of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. How did you end up involved with this project? And why is it so important to you?
Jessica Letaw: I appreciate the question. I often like to say, and it's a joke and not a joke, that I like to be in any room where buildings and the built environment is being discussed. I also occasionally describe myself as a professional building hugger. I really believe that our built environment is a silent neighbor and one that we have to figure out how to encourage to be a good one. I got involved with Justice InDeed pretty early on in the project. One of the project's founders, Mike Steinberg, and his close friend and friend and collaborator, Matthew Countryman--Matthew is a close friend and collaborator of mine. So, we had lunch and talked about the project, and I was pretty much a goner from the moment I heard about it. I've been an informal student of housing segregation and housing exclusion for a long time. Racially restrictive covenants weren't new to me, but their prevalence in Washtenaw County was. And as someone who has chosen Ann Arbor as her home--I'm originally from Atlanta--and one who deeply wants Ann Arbor to live up to its deepest aspirations for itself, having a more honest reckoning of history and being a part of that was very enticing to me.
David Fair: So, obviously, a passion project and the same can be said for you, Justin. Outside of Justice InDeed, you are director of creative spaces and learning technologies at the University of Michigan Library. You have a creative bent to you. You like to make films and other creative projects. So, what brought you and that perspective to Justice InDeed?
Justin Schell: I've been working with other covenant projects around the country for--
David Fair: Yeah, it's not exclusive to our area for sure.
Justin Schell: Yeah. But I think also it's thinking about the different ways that these histories entwine and really approaching it from a story's perspective and not just the history's perspective and sort of the narratives that informed the efforts to shape these, but also the narratives that we want to tell ourselves and that need to be changed. And also thinking about when we have all of this data from this project, we will make it available, and we want to see not just what policy folks can do and historians, but also artists and poets and other creatives that can tell these stories. Every one of these documents that has a covenant has a story. And so, we want to make sure thay people can look at and amplify the stories that are within these documents.
David Fair: And, Jessica, as you consider not only the covenants, we have to look what those covenants created and the impacts that are lasting. How exactly has our community been impacted that perhaps we're not considering when we talk specifically about the covenant?
Jessica Letaw: Something that I would love for us to be thinking and talking more about is the generational wealth impacts that this has had. Folks that we're able to buy into and even live in Ann Arbor beginning one, two, three, four or five generations ago have a massive financial leg up on folks who were able to who weren't able to come until much later, or who still aren't able to live here. If you're only looking at property prices, even in the last ten years, some valuations in some neighborhoods have just about doubled. And that's just in the last ten years. If we consider multiple generations of homeownership sales and what that proximity not just to resource but opportunity does, we're looking at massive, disproportionate generational impacts and harm across race, across ethnicity, and sometimes across language. As Justin was talking about earlier, there were a lot of different inclusions and exclusions written in, and one of them sometimes was people from English speaking countries. So, I'd love for us to be thinking about not just how we're impacted today, but how families have been impacted over generations.
David Fair: Washtenaw United continues on 89 one WEMU. And, Justin, as you work with and follow what other covenant projects around the country are doing, obviously, there's an exploration of some solutions. Does it involve reparations in one form or another?
Justin Schell: Yes. We're very explicit at Justice InDeed about this being a project to repair the harms done by this. And that could take a variety of forms. We've looked at examples from folks in Evanston, Illinois, and there's a newer program in Washington state that was directly related to racial covenants research in Washtenaw County. And so, it's not just about figuring out where they are or figuring out if a property that you own has one. It's always about thinking about the sort of broader structural elements, as well as repairing the harms that have been wrought by these documents and these restrictions.
David Fair: The work of Justice InDeed is multifaceted. So, what will the work of Justice InDeed consist of over the next 12 months as you work to advance this project? Jessica?
Jessica Letaw: It will consist of gatherings in a multitude of different configurations, communities, sizes and places for folks to come together in these documentation sessions, to actually look at the deeds and transcribe the dates, the language, the buyers and sellers into the database that we're putting together. It will also look like folks having a collective imagination about what's coming next. You ask about reparations, and Justin talked about repair, but also the art that's going to come from this project. I think one of the things that, simultaneously both so frustrating and so exciting, is that we don't know what comes next. And that's why we invite the dreamers and the makers and the doers alongside this project.
David Fair: And would you like to add to that, Justin?
Justin Schell: Yeah. I think being able to understand where exactly these are will allow us to elaborate on specific histories. There was a lawsuit in Hanesworth Park where a number of white families tried to sue and to get a Black family kicked out of the neighborhood. And that is just one of many of those kinds of local neighborhood stories that are within these documents. And so, being able to better understand and research those and share those out and talk to people in these neighborhoods is something that we definitely want to keep doing, because we see a lot of elements of our history is in the county and in the city. And there's so much to research and explore and sort of excavate as part of this project.
David Fair: I'd like to thank you both for making the time and sharing the information today. I think it's quite valuable.
Jessica Letaw: Thanks, David!
Justin Schell: Thank you so much!
David Fair: That is Jessica Letaw and Justin Schell. They serve as co-leads of Justice InDeed. To find out more about the collaborative project and the work they're doing, stop by our website at wemu.org. We'll get you everywhere you need to go. Washtenaw United is produced in partnership with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan. We bring it to you every Monday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89 one WEMU FM, Ypsilanti.
UWSEM STATEMENT:
The affordable housing crisis that our nation is struggling with is compounded by the issue of closing the gap in homeownership rates among Black Americans, which has fallen behind since the financial crisis in 2008. According to the report, the gap between Black and white homeownership is now wider than it was more than 50 years ago, right before the 1968 Fair Housing Act was enacted to create equal housing opportunities for minorities, according to a report by the Urban Institute.
We must work together to end racial housing discrimination that has been perpetuated for generations, along with hundreds of years of institutional racism, much of which still exists today.
Some examples of systematic housing discrimination:
- Restrictive Housing Covenants: Although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 forbids all discrimination in housing, researchers point to the lingering effects of racially restrictive covenants that required home deeds in communities across the U.S. to include clauses that explicitly denied buyers based on race, ethnicity or religion. (History.com)
- A 2020 study by the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project published ongoing research that so far found covenants covering more than 30,000 properties in Washington state, for example.
- Secret Bias in Mortgage-Approval Algorithms: An investigation done by The Markup, and first reported by The Associated Press, found that algorithms lenders use to determine whether an applicant qualifies for a home mortgage have an inherent bias against minorities – mostly Black applicants – making their path to achieving homeownership and building wealth exponentially more difficult.
- Predatory Lending: Predatory lending is an easily overlooked business that has damaged communities of color and low-income borrowers for decades. It traps them in never-ending cycles of debt with high-interest loans on coercive terms.
Changing the course of this entrenched problem will require intentional policymaking, an evidentiary foundation and effective partnerships at the national and local level between the many stakeholders in the housing ecosystem.
Bringing the rate of Black homeownership up to that of white Americans would require increasing the number of existing Black homeowners by 72 percent, or 5 million, according to a consortium of housing groups known as the Black Homeownership Collaborative, which aims to increase Black homeownership by three million households by 2030.
WEMU has partnered with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan to explore the people, organizations, and institutions creating opportunity and equity in our area. And, as part of this ongoing series, you’ll also hear from the people benefiting and growing from the investments being made in the areas of our community where there are gaps in available services. It is a community voice. It is 'Washtenaw United.'
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