Law and social justice advocates at Justice InDeed have been chipping away at racially discriminatory land covenants that are more than a half-century old that have shaped and still shape where people of color live in Washtenaw.
Washtenaw has over 7,000 land covenants restricting African Americans and people of color from owning certain properties. Even though the Fair Housing Act currently supersedes these discriminatory rules, they are still on the books.
Justin Schell is a lead for the Justice InDeed project. He says racially restrictive covenants were a white landowner response to the Great Migration.
“They tried to assuage their fears that their neighborhoods wouldn’t lose their character, their housing value wouldn’t go down, and all of those fears that came with this kind of racism.”
Schell says home and landowners can use Justice InDeed’s digital archive to find if their property has a discriminatory covenant. He adds they can then be amended or repealed through the county’s Register of Deeds Office.
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