Twin Cities homeowners want to remove racial covenants, but cities are struggling to keep up

Twin Cities homeowners are becoming more aware of racially restrictive covenants written into deeds, but there's a bottleneck preventing faster removal for those interested in eliminating them.

The city attorneys' offices that help residents discharge the covenants from their property deeds are straining to keep up with demand, particularly in suburban communities with fewer attorneys on staff.

"We are all recruiting more attorneys," said Golden Valley City Attorney Maria Cisneros, who was involved in the founding of the Just Deeds project in the west metro city. "The more cities that join, the more requests we get."

Just Deeds is a coalition of city attorneys helping residents remove racially restrictive covenants from the deeds to their homes, and add language acknowledging the covenant and the harms of housing discrimination. The covenants have not been binding since the 1960s, but in the early 20th century they were included in thousands of deeds across the Twin Cities to prevent houses from being sold or rented to people of color.

The task is becoming more than most city attorney's offices can handle on top of their usual work of reviewing ordinances, proposed developments and other city business. Cities like Golden Valley and Bloomington are partnering with private firms willing to take on some of the covenant work without charging cities or residents.

But city attorneys say they need more help, and more partners from the private sector.

"We need more lawyers to step up and help out," Bloomington City Attorney Melissa Manderscheid said during an April 17 City Council meeting. Bloomington has some 500 racial covenants on homes, enacted between 1923 and 1951.

Cisneros said she has been working to develop partnerships with law firms that can take on a steady stream of racial covenants from Golden Valley and Robbinsdale — right now, the Golden Valley city attorney's office is handling Robbinsdale covenants because the smaller city does not have enough staff.

"We're responsible for about 3,000 covenants," Cisneros said. "They are very dense in Robbinsdale, St. Louis Park, Edina, Richfield as well as Minneapolis."

Minneapolis city officials say an initial burst of interest in discharging covenants has slowed, but many suburban communities still have more resident interest than legal firepower.

When St. Paul joined the Just Deeds coalition this year, the city started a partnership with Mitchell Hamline School of Law to help process more covenant-discharge applications. The partnership connects law students, practicing under a professor's supervision with St. Paul residents who want to renounce restrictive covenants on their deeds.

"We want people to clamor to put their applications in," said St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson.

More cities are joining Just Deeds, so demand is expected to keep growing. The University of Minnesota's Mapping Prejudice project finished cataloguing racial covenants on deeds in Ramsey County last year, and mapping work in Dakota County cities is starting this spring.

Thoughtful conversations

The process of discharging a discriminatory covenant from a deed typically takes just under two hours, said Megan Rogers, an attorney with the firm Larkin Hoffman, which has been working with the Bloomington to help discharge covenants.

During a recent deed clinic with Mitchell Hamline students, Rogers said some students wondered why the process could not be more efficient.

Rogers, who formerly served as an assistant city attorney in Bloomington, said getting the covenants out of deeds is only half of the work. The other half is helping homeowners understand the damage done by housing discrimination, she said. "It's really a commitment to participate in these hard conversations in our communities."

Cisneros agreed.

"The most important aspect is the learning," she said.