Racial Restrictive Covenants Project – EWU

For much of the 20th century in the United States, a system of white supremacy was partly maintained by discriminatory housing policies. In Washington State, thousands of residential properties included legal covenants barring certain racial minorities from owning the property. Though these racist property restrictions were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1948 and have been unenforceable since, they remain on the books in many Washington communities. 

In 2022, Washington State passed SHB 1335, Concerning review and property owner notification of recorded documents with unlawful racial restrictions, which assigned Eastern Washington University and the University of Washington with the task of finding all of the racially restrictive property covenants in the state and informing owners about how to remove them. EWU is proud to be involved in correcting this historic wrong.