Mounds View requires homeowners to discharge racist deeds before sale. 100 have done it.

Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.

Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.

“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.

Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.

Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.

Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.

Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.

The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.

The city has helped streamline the process of discharging covenants for residents. Residents can visit the city’s website to download a form, fill it out and bring it to City Hall, where staff will notarize and mail it. The city covers the cost, which could include postage and paying a notary.

Johnson said her neighborhood is tight-knit and everyone she knows on her street has had their covenants discharged. While she and her husband aren’t planning to sell their home soon, she said they felt the step was an important one.

“It’s just wrong. Words have power and words can heal,” she said.

Falcon Heights is putting together a process to help residents discharge racially restrictive covenants, Council Member Paula Mielke said. The city, just north of St. Paul, had the highest number of racial covenants per capita in 1960 of any Ramsey County city, according to Mapping Prejudice. Mounds View ranks second.

“The city administrator is setting up a process just like Mounds View, where people can come and our city staff will be able to help discharge the covenant,” Mielke said. “It will kick off on Human Rights Day, and after that, people can make an appointment to come.”

The process will be voluntary, but Mielke said she hopes to see Falcon Heights pass an ordinance like Mounds View’s requiring the process before home sales.

“It was racist then and it’s still racist now,” she said of the covenants.