Author: Mary Daly

Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds

Posted on Author Mary Daly

See updated post

“No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant”.  This language, taken directly from a property deed in West Hartford’s High Ledge Homes Development, started appearing in property deeds during the 1940s in Connecticut, along with many other northern states, in order to prevent minorities from moving into white neighborhoods.  Real estate developers, homeowners and neighborhood associations wrote these restrictions, called housing covenants, for their developments. These discriminatory covenants excluded certain groups from housing areas in not just Connecticut, but throughout the northern United States as well.

Source: UConn Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. Click for Whole Property Deed.

 

Why Did Housing Covenants Exist?

In 1937, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) came out with a report of Hartford’s neighborhoods evaluating them on a scale from A-D. The HOLC labeled areas with a high concentration of minorities D areas, and even areas with a small number of minority families often resulted in a C rating.  This report documented how the racial composition of a neighborhood influenced the values of homes in the area.  It caused whites to become increasingly worried about minorities moving into their neighborhood—they did not want their housing values to decline.  In addition to this, the Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to work in industrial factories in the north greatly increased the minority population in Hartford beginning in the 1940s.  This influx of blacks into the north, and the labeling of neighborhoods with minorities as declining or undesirable by the HOLC, contributed to the white flight into the suburbs of Hartford.  Real estate agencies and homeowners were concerned about black neighbors causing a decline in property values in their new white suburban enclaves, so they started writing housing covenants into their property deeds. Due to these covenants, blacks were nearly eliminated from the suburban housing market during the 1940s.

 

Shelley v. Kraemer: Ending Housing Covenants

Source: UConn Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. Click image for interactive map.

In 1948, restrictive housing covenants were deemed unenforceable by law in the Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer because of the fourteenth amendment (the amendment that provides equal treatment to all citizens of the United States).  Privately, people would still abide by the restrictive covenants in property deeds until the Fair Housing Act of 1968, even though they could not be enforced when taken to court. Since it is still legal to have these restrictive covenants in property deeds, many still remain today.  The High Ledge Homes Development is one of five areas in West Hartford where these clauses still exist in a majority of the property deeds.

 

Interviews with Today’s West Hartford Residents

The Cities, Suburbs and Schools class from Trinity College interviewed citizens of West Hartford in 2011 about the restrictive covenants to see their perception of covenants that existed in the property deeds of their homes.  The younger, new residents of the area reacted alarmed that they existed.  However, Mary Everett, an elderly citizen in a West Hartford neighborhood was not surprised—she knew of the covenant when she purchased her home in 1970.  Those who purchased their homes recently were more innocent to the discrimination, and said things such as, “It’s not something I would have expected in Connecticut…I grew up believing that [overt racism] was in the south”, indicating that younger citizens did not expect such overt racism in the north. These covenants have shaped Connecticut’s communities today, yet many are unaware of their significant impact.

Learn More:

Maps:

Interviews:


Works Cited:

Dougherty, Jack. “Maps created with UConn MAGIC.” On The Line, August 5, 2011. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/maps/.
Everett, Mary. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford and Restrictive Covenants, (with Video).” Oral History Interviews (July 21, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/23.
Hansen, Susan. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford (with Video).” Oral History Interviews (July 22, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/17.
Walsh, Debra. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford.” Oral History Interviews (July 21, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/21.

Shelley V. Kraemer (Syllabus), 100 U.S. 1 (U.S. Supreme Court 1948).

Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds

Posted on Author Mary Daly

See updated post

“No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant”.  This language, taken directly from a property deed in West Hartford’s High Ledge Homes Development, started appearing in property deeds during the 1940s in Connecticut, along with many other northern states, in order to prevent minorities from moving into white neighborhoods.  Real estate developers, homeowners and neighborhood associations wrote these restrictions, called housing covenants, for their developments. These discriminatory covenants excluded certain groups from housing areas in not just Connecticut, but throughout the northern United States as well.

Source: UConn Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. Click for Whole Property Deed.

 

Why Did Housing Covenants Exist?

In 1937, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) came out with a report of Hartford’s neighborhoods evaluating them on a scale from A-D. The HOLC labeled areas with a high concentration of minorities D areas, and even areas with a small number of minority families often resulted in a C rating.  This report documented how the racial composition of a neighborhood influenced the values of homes in the area.  It caused whites to become increasingly worried about minorities moving into their neighborhood—they did not want their housing values to decline.  In addition to this, the Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to work in industrial factories in the north greatly increased the minority population in Hartford beginning in the 1940s.  This influx of blacks into the north, and the labeling of neighborhoods with minorities as declining or undesirable by the HOLC, contributed to the white flight into the suburbs of Hartford.  Real estate agencies and homeowners were concerned about black neighbors causing a decline in property values in their new white suburban enclaves, so they started writing housing covenants into their property deeds. Due to these covenants, blacks were nearly eliminated from the suburban housing market during the 1940s.

 

Shelley v. Kraemer: Ending Housing Covenants

Source: UConn Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. Click image for interactive map.

In 1948, restrictive housing covenants were deemed unenforceable by law in the Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer because of the fourteenth amendment (the amendment that provides equal treatment to all citizens of the United States).  Privately, people would still abide by the restrictive covenants in property deeds until the Fair Housing Act of 1968, even though they could not be enforced when taken to court. Since it is still legal to have these restrictive covenants in property deeds, many still remain today.  The High Ledge Homes Development is one of five areas in West Hartford where these clauses still exist in a majority of the property deeds.

 

Interviews with Today’s West Hartford Residents

The Cities, Suburbs and Schools class from Trinity College interviewed citizens of West Hartford in 2011 about the restrictive covenants to see their perception of covenants that existed in the property deeds of their homes.  The younger, new residents of the area reacted alarmed that they existed.  However, Mary Everett, an elderly citizen in a West Hartford neighborhood was not surprised—she knew of the covenant when she purchased her home in 1970.  Those who purchased their homes recently were more innocent to the discrimination, and said things such as, “It’s not something I would have expected in Connecticut…I grew up believing that [overt racism] was in the south”, indicating that younger citizens did not expect such overt racism in the north. These covenants have shaped Connecticut’s communities today, yet many are unaware of their significant impact.

Learn More:

Maps:

Interviews:


Works Cited:

Dougherty, Jack. “Maps created with UConn MAGIC.” On The Line, August 5, 2011. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/maps/.
Everett, Mary. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford and Restrictive Covenants, (with Video).” Oral History Interviews (July 21, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/23.
Hansen, Susan. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford (with Video).” Oral History Interviews (July 22, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/17.
Walsh, Debra. “Oral History Interview on West Hartford.” Oral History Interviews (July 21, 2011). http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/21.

Shelley V. Kraemer (Syllabus), 100 U.S. 1 (U.S. Supreme Court 1948).

Citing with Zotero

Posted on Author Mary Daly

When starting looking for sources, I decided to type in these few key words: Hartford, housing, barriers, and change–all words that have to do with our next assignment on how barriers in housing have changed over time.  The first website I looked for sources in was JStor.  I found two articles, one called “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets, and article written by Trinity College Faculty” 1 .   The other was an article called “Homelessness in Québec City, Québec and Hartford, Connecticut: A Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Analysis” 2 .  I picked both of these for my journal articles because they both not only talked about Hartford, but also talked about the change in opportunity people had with housing. The article comparing homelessness in Québec and Hartford has this sentence, “Having no home is a visible comment on society’s failure to house its most vulnerable members” 1 , in the first paragraph of the article, showing that it will focus on how society deals with housing for the lower class. The other article about schools in suburban areas begins with a statistic that race influenced where someone lived seven more times over the decade long study 3 .

The next place I looked for sources was historical newspapers in the Hartford Courant, and I found “A Realistic Way of Crossing Barriers” 4 an article published in 1968 about needing a grant for affordable housing.  This article is interesting because it enters how people were thinking about housing barriers in the 60′s. After this, I searched the Trinity library for books on this topic. I came up with a book called “The Status of Equal Housing Opportunity: A Report of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities” 5, and although it is not specifically on Hartford, the subject of the book was discrimination in housing, a perfect match to what I am looking for.  Lastly, I just searched google for a website, and came up with a article called “‘Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Barriers in Affluent Towns” by Mike Swift 2 .  Zotero was not able to cite this website, so I just did it myself.

  1. ibid ↩
  2. Swift, Mike. “‘Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Down Barriers in Affluent Towns – HartfordInfo.org.”‘€˜Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Down Barriers in Affluent Towns. Hartford Public Library, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. <http://www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/documents/smartgrowth/htfd_courant _112104.asp>. ↩
  1.  Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (2009): 523–548. ↩
  2.  Irene Glasser, Louise Fournier, and André Costopoulos, “Homelessness In Québec City, Québec And Hartford, Connecticut: A Cross-National And Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 28, no. 2 (July 1, 1999): 141–163. ↩
  3.  Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (2009): 523–548 ↩
  4.  “A Realistic Way Of Crossing Barriers,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1986) (Hartford, Conn., United States, July 27, 1968).  ↩
  5.  Connecticut, The Status of Equal Housing Opportunity: a Report of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (Hartford: The Commission, 1978). ↩

Citing with Zotero

Posted on Author Mary Daly

When starting looking for sources, I decided to type in these few key words: Hartford, housing, barriers, and change–all words that have to do with our next assignment on how barriers in housing have changed over time.  The first website I looked for sources in was JStor.  I found two articles, one called “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets, and article written by Trinity College Faculty” 1 .   The other was an article called “Homelessness in Québec City, Québec and Hartford, Connecticut: A Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Analysis” 2 .  I picked both of these for my journal articles because they both not only talked about Hartford, but also talked about the change in opportunity people had with housing. The article comparing homelessness in Québec and Hartford has this sentence, “Having no home is a visible comment on society’s failure to house its most vulnerable members” 1 , in the first paragraph of the article, showing that it will focus on how society deals with housing for the lower class. The other article about schools in suburban areas begins with a statistic that race influenced where someone lived seven more times over the decade long study 3 .

The next place I looked for sources was historical newspapers in the Hartford Courant, and I found “A Realistic Way of Crossing Barriers” 4 an article published in 1968 about needing a grant for affordable housing.  This article is interesting because it enters how people were thinking about housing barriers in the 60′s. After this, I searched the Trinity library for books on this topic. I came up with a book called “The Status of Equal Housing Opportunity: A Report of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities” 5, and although it is not specifically on Hartford, the subject of the book was discrimination in housing, a perfect match to what I am looking for.  Lastly, I just searched google for a website, and came up with a article called “‘Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Barriers in Affluent Towns” by Mike Swift 2 .  Zotero was not able to cite this website, so I just did it myself.

  1. ibid ↩
  2. Swift, Mike. “‘Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Down Barriers in Affluent Towns – HartfordInfo.org.”‘€˜Affordable’ Still Not Equal: Housing Law Fails to Break Down Barriers in Affluent Towns. Hartford Public Library, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. <http://www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/documents/smartgrowth/htfd_courant _112104.asp>. ↩
  1.  Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (2009): 523–548. ↩
  2.  Irene Glasser, Louise Fournier, and André Costopoulos, “Homelessness In Québec City, Québec And Hartford, Connecticut: A Cross-National And Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 28, no. 2 (July 1, 1999): 141–163. ↩
  3.  Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (2009): 523–548 ↩
  4.  “A Realistic Way Of Crossing Barriers,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1986) (Hartford, Conn., United States, July 27, 1968).  ↩
  5.  Connecticut, The Status of Equal Housing Opportunity: a Report of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (Hartford: The Commission, 1978). ↩

Exclusionary Zoning

Posted on Author Mary Daly

Exclusionary zoning is a way of preventing those who come from different economic incomes from living with each other.  When I think of exclusionary zoning, my first vision is the children’s book The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.  Although this neighborhood does not have the wealth restrictions that exclusionary zoning has, it has the same root idea as exclusionary zoning: neighborhoods should all have the same type of housing—be it architecturally pleasing mansions with expansive, just groomed lots, or haphazardly constructed apartments—they should remain separate.  The neighborhood in the book has houses that have looked alike since the neighborhood began. This changes when a bird spilled orange paint on Mr. Plumbean’s house, spurring Mr. Plumbean into painting his house to resemble his dreams. This led to disagreement around the neighborhood over the altered state of his home.

Source: Daniel Manus Pinkwater, 1977

 

The Big Orange Splot takes a stand against conforming, because, at the end, Mr. Plumbean convinces his neighbors to follow his footsteps and paint their houses how they like them, instead of confining to the same as everyone else. 1

With exclusionary zoning, there are more problems than Pinkwater’s children’s book includes—it isn’t just about being different.  Neighborhoods with exclusionary zoning can include laws that require not only single-family homes, but those that are a certain square footage and lot size.  This creates limited access for lower-class families that cannot afford to live in a luxury sized home.  On the surface, this just prevents a mixture of different types of housing in neighborhoods, but when looking further into how this method of zoning pans out, there are many consequences.  This results in limiting a variety of things, including the prevention of lower-class individual’s ability to attend the schools in these areas and class mobility.  These two problems go hand in hand, as a good education in a school with a variety of resources can greatly increase a person’s chance of rising out of poverty. A child who attends school in an area where 80 percent or more of the attendees are living in poverty scores 13 to 15 percent lower than those who attend a school where 80 of the kids come from middle or upper class backgrounds. 2  Not only does education play a role in class mobility, but also when poor communities are shut off from other areas of the city (often, surburbs) because of exclusionary zoning, this creates concentrated ghettos, areas where there are little mixed-class interactions.

Pinkwater shows in a very simplified way that people are afraid of something different.  When people live in a neighborhood where the houses all look somewhat alike, it is easy.  But that does not help society progress into what it could be since it silences the voice of a large chunk of the population by pushing them into the only place they can afford—places that have continually mediocre schools to teach their kids.

 

Works Cited:

Pinkwater, Daniel Manus. The Big Orange Splot. New York: Hastings House, 1977. Print.

“Exclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 09 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning>.

“Inclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning>.

 

 

  1. Pinkwater, Daniel Manus. The Big Orange Splot. New York: Hastings House, 1977. Print. ↩
  2. “Inclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning>. ↩