The answer is something that the Marin County’s Office of the Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk (ARCC) want you to know about. Restrictive covenants simply put are contract clauses that are intended to limit the contracting party’s future conduct. In the case of land, they can prevent certain uses of the land. But the restrictive covenants Marin County’s ARCC is concerned with were designed to keep people of certain races out of a neighborhood, as homeowners, and even as renters.
The Marin County ARCC includes a quote from their paper, Mapping Marin County’s Past through Unlawful Restrictions, as an example of a restrictive covenant, “No person of the African, Japanese, Chinese or of any Mongolian descent shall be allowed to purchase, own, lease or occupy said real property.”
2022 Challenge Award Winner
The California State Association of Counties (CSAC) recently chose Marin County’s Restrictive Covenant Project as one of the most innovative programs developed by California’s Counties in 2022, designating them a Challenge Award winner. In all, CSAC honored 19 programs from 14 counties after reviewing 370 entries. Marin County ARCC was one of 18 programs earning Challenge Awards.
According to the county’s press release, Assessor-Recorder-County-Clerk Shelly Scott said she was proud that the program, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is having such an impact. Board of Supervisors President Katie Rice, who found racist language in her own title documents several years ago, proved eager to draw attention to the need for change. “We’re extremely grateful to receive this award and want to extend appreciation to all those who got us on this path,” Scott said.
You might think these restrictive covenants only took place in the southern states of this country. If so, you’ll be shocked to learn how prevalent these restrictive covenants became, in communities across the nation.
Nationally, roughly between 1920 and 1948, racially restrictive covenants were used to keep people of color out of white neighborhoods. The covenants became unenforceable in 1948. They were not officially considered illegal until 1968 with the passage of the Fair Housing Act. However, between 1934 and 1968, the Federal Housing Administration’s Mortgage Insurance Requirements Used Redlining, thereby perpetuating housing segregation based on race.
Inequality Ranks Marin #2 in the State
Until 2021, Marin County ranked 1st as the most racially inequitable county in the state, according to the Advancement Project California. They dropped to 2nd place in 2021. Out of 58 counites, Marin still has a long way to go.
According to Marin County’s Restrictive Covenant Project, it aims to inform and educate residents about the impacts of exclusionary housing policies from past decades. They’ve made a great video about the project that is really worth your time.
This knowledge, in turn, provides a clear, if ugly, perspective on our history. Whether unenforceable or illegal, housing discrimination still exists today. But as often happens, the victims are blamed. When we think about the accumulation of wealth through property ownership and the opportunities that builds within families, it is easy to see how the lack of fair access creates inequality.