With guidance from the Just Deeds project, Falcon Heights homeowners can disavow and renounce the restrictive covenants on their property records.

The Just Deeds Coalition is a group of lawyers, advocates, and community members working to acknowledge and address systemic racism in housing in Minnesota.

Check the interactive map at Mapping Prejudice to see if your address shows a restrictive covenant. 

OVERVIEW

During the forming of the Twin Cities, discriminatory covenants were used to keep people of color from buying houses in specific Minnesota neighborhoods. The result is a century of segregated communities and huge disparities in wealth, health, and well-being. Overall, Falcon Heights is home to 101 of these covenants. Below is an example of a restrictive covenant:

On Wednesday, July 13, 2022, the Falcon Heights City Council took action to support the work of the Just Deeds project. As a result, Falcon Heights residents have the opportunity to acknowledge the historical discrimination caused by these covenants and to discharge them from their property records. Read the City's Resolution here.

HISTORY

As properties were subdivided for housing development, racial covenants were placed on the new parcels to segregate communities and restrict home ownership along racial and ethnic lines. For decades, this allowed white homeowners an opportunity to build wealth at the expense and the exclusion of the Black community and other Communities of Color. 

As you can see in the map below, created by the Mapping Prejudice project, racial covenants were clustered in Falcon Heights neighborhoods as they developed. While some areas of the community were not designed with racial covenants, other parts of the city have them.