Thurston County still has illegal, discriminatory covenants on 100s of deeds and plats
“No other than the white race shall be allowed to occupy any residence in this subdivision except servants.”
This language, included in the 1948 plat of Beachcrest first addition, is one of many discriminatory covenants still present in hundreds of local property deeds and plats in Thurston County.
The authors of such covenants aimed to segregate society based on race, culture and socioeconomic status. Though this language has been effectively unenforceable for decades, county auditor Mary Hall said her office has found at least 377 examples of restrictive covenants still present on official documentation.
“Restrictive covenants are a terrible remnant of racial discrimination and we continue to see the impacts of these covenants,” Hall said during the Tuesday Board of County Commissioners meeting.
To help correct these documents, the County Board unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday affirming the illegality of such language and encouraging residents to fix them. At the same time, Hall’s office has been identifying affected properties and planning to conduct outreach to property owners on the issue.
A state law that was amended in 2018 allowed discriminatory language to be stricken from property documents without a fee through the county’s auditor’s office. However, Hall said no one has taken advantage of the free service so far.
“Our plan is to reach out directly to the landowners,” Hall said. “Kind of in a, ‘Did you know that this is an option for you?’”
Previously passed federal laws, such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, have invalidated such discriminatory language. Similar laws at the state and county level were enacted the following year and have since been updated over the past several decades, according to this week’s resolution.
Coincidentally, Hall said Washington House Bill 1335 may eventually require all counties to identify discriminatory language and notify landowners in a similar manner. The bill, now in the House Committee on Local Government, has 20 sponsors. It is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 2.
The board does not have a position on the bill yet, Commissioner Tye Menser said Tuesday. There is concern the policies proposed by the bill may cost the county money if enacted, he said.
Jeremy Davis, operations manager for the county’s Community Planning and Economic Development office, presented the resolution to the board Tuesday. He said court decisions and previously passed laws have invalidated discriminatory language but did not remove them from property records.
In more recent years, state law has enabled this language to be removed from property documents through Superior Court or by a majority vote of homeowners associations.
However, he said the 2018 law enabling the auditor’s office to process these modifications for free made the process easier. He said the intention of Tuesday’s resolution and the auditor’s services in this regard is not to erase history.
“These don’t remove them from the historic record, but they do remove them from the title of the property,” Davis said. “They give us an opportunity to right a wrong, while still having those there in context so that we can take heed of our past history.”
