Peter Williams thought he had the law on his side last year when he led an effort to remove ugly and illegal housing restrictions that still appeared in the founding documents of his Tucson neighborhood.
Now he knows it for sure.
Gov. Katie Hobbs has signed a new state law that makes it easier for homeowners and neighborhood associations to get rid of race-based housing codes that were outlawed in the 1960s but still appear on the books in at least 150 Tucson subdivisions.
Senate Bill 1432, also known as the Uniform Unlawful Restrictions in Land Records Act, gives the governing boards of neighborhood associations full authority to amend their covenants, conditions and restrictions — or CC&Rs – to remove any “unlawful restrictions” without a vote of their full membership.
It also allows individual property owners to remove illegal restrictions on their own, simply by filing an amendment with their local recorder’s office.
A document distributed to developers by the Federal Housing Administration in the late 1930s shows sample property covenants, including a fill-in-the-blank restriction based on race.
Williams said he and his fellow neighborhood association board members are “just thrilled” about the new law and how much support it got from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at the Arizona Legislature.
“Nobody voted against it,” he said.
The measure was introduced on Jan. 30 by Republican senator and former speaker of the House J.D. Mesnard and co-sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Denise “Mitzi” Epstein, both from Phoenix-area districts.
Hobbs signed it on March 29, after state lawmakers passed it without a single no vote.
The law comes less than a year after researchers at the University of Arizona documented just how widespread racist housing restrictions once were in the Tucson area.
The Mapping Racist Covenants Project tracked down the CC&Rs for more than 750 subdivisions established between Arizona statehood in 1912 and the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, which banned race-based property restrictions. More than one quarter of them had racist rules on file.
Though they were rendered illegal and unenforceable more than 50 years ago, these discriminatory relics can still be found in the governing documents of neighborhoods across Tucson and the nation, largely because of the difficulty and expense involved in amending private agreements among homeowners.
The new state law seeks to change that.
“This is a momentous step forward for Arizona,” said population geographer and U of A professor Jason Jurjevich, who led the mapping project. “Amending CC&Rs will reduce dignitary harm for people of color and other restricted groups who, until now, had to read and sign these documents as part of the closing process.”
Williams is board chairman of the San Carlos Place Neighborhood Association, which governs a subdivision of 77 homes west of Swan Road between Grant Road and Glenn Street.
He said he went looking for a way to amend the neighborhood’s CC&Rs because he was disgusted and embarrassed by the overt racism still included in the 78-year-old document. Like dozens of other Tucson subdivisions, San Carlos Place once prohibited “any person of African or Asiatic descent” or “not of the White or Caucasian race” from owning property or living there unless they were employed as domestic servants.
Last summer, with the blessing of his fellow board members, Williams filed a revised version of the CC&Rs with the offending and illegal language blacked out. He said all it took was some official letterhead, a notary’s stamp and $30 for the filing fee at the Pima County Recorder’s Office.
A similar approach is spelled out in the new state law.
“It just reinforces what I’ve been saying all along,” Williams said. “It gives the process that much more gravitas.”
Population geographer and University of Arizona assistant professor Jason Jurjevich led the Mapping Racist Covenants research project that identified more than 200 Tucson neighborhoods that once restricted residents based on race.
He said the new law even appears to give legal cover to neighborhoods that lack severability clauses allowing invalid restrictions to be jettisoned and to neighborhoods saddled with so-called “perpetuity clauses” that declare the racist rules permanent.
“The bill gives every neighborhood association the same language to lean on,” he said.
Since he helped clean up the CC&Rs for San Carlos Place, Williams said he has been contacted by three or four other neighborhood associations that wish to do the same. For anyone who’s interested, he has produced a short how-to guide outlining the process he used.
As far as Jurjevich is concerned, the new law is a hopeful sign that an ugly chapter of our past is squarely behind us. He just doesn’t want to see it forgotten entirely.
“I’m hopeful too that we, as Arizonans, will continue to explore the history of why racist and illegal language exists in CCRs in the first place,” Jurjevich said. “Understanding the legacy of racist CCRs and other forms of housing discrimination is an essential step towards securing more equitable and just housing policy across Arizona.”
The new interactive map compiles 56 years of race-based neighborhood covenants.
