Assemblyman doesn't want to live with housing covenants that endorsed segregation

[flashl]

Though the decades-old contracts are illegal, their rules are still attached to some deeds. State legislator Hector De La Torre has introduced a bill that would clear them from public records.

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 27, 2008

After he bought his first home, state Assemblyman Hector De La Torre uncovered a dark chapter in its history: A covenant attached to the original deed declared that the house, like all the others in his South Gate neighborhood, could be occupied by white people only. Minorities could stay there -- but only as servants.

It is a discovery that has startled any number of California homeowners. Many of the state's vast subdivisions, particularly in Los Angeles County, were once governed by restrictive racial covenants designed to enforce segregation. Those covenants have been illegal for more than half a century, but their offensive rules remain part of some deeds. Most home buyers encounter the issue when they are asked to sign a disclosure as part of the escrow process, pledging to ignore any racist language.

De La Torre (D-South Gate) decided that wasn't good enough. This year, he proposed a law that would require racially restrictive covenants -- it is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands statewide -- to be stricken from the public record at the time of the next sale.

The bill has run into stiff opposition from real estate agents, title insurance companies and county recorders who complain that it would be expensive and create a bureaucratic nightmare that could slow real estate transactions -- to little purpose since the covenants are already illegal.

[MountainLaurel]

1. Interesting

In my hometown, there are certain neighborhoods where the housing covenants prohibit selling to an Italian. A friend of my mother's found out about hers after her parents died and she inherited the home they had lived in since the late 1950s.

[Warpy]

3. That's something people miss when they wax nostalgic

about the 1950s. Housing developments were as rigidly segregated as everything else, with areas restricted by job, nationality, religion, and income as well as color.

Anybody who wants to bring that back is insane.

[islandmkl]

2. during the early '90s i was involved in finding locations for fast-food new market expansion...

in the area about 75-100 miles around Charlotte, NC....

in more than a few instances, older residential areas becoming 'commercial' would have deeds with 'white only' clauses....

though illegal, the clauses remained...we, upon the advice of our attorney, would not participate in the transaction until the clause was removed....

batting average for getting the clause removed: 0-for-7....

the current owners wanted nothing to do with removing the clause...to a person they implied that the clause was still good for them, illegal or not....

jim crow was not/is not dead....

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. I have mixed feelings about this --

my problem is that striking them from the record erases the fact that such restrictions ever existed. It is historically dishonest.

Such discriminatory clauses are illegal, as noted above; this strikes me as a kind of white-wash.

OTOH, copies of the original deeds can be maintained for historical purposes while the active deeds eliminate such wording. It makes sense.

I believe that it would allow people to avoid confronting history, which is always problematic to me.