The RP drafted bills to remove restrictions on racist acts

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Roeland Park has drafted two bills with local lawmakers to provide an easier way to remove racist clauses from deeds. File picture.

Cities in Johnson County may find it easier to erase racist language from local housing covenants with legislation now making its way into the Kansas Statehouse.

Two bills SB 77 and HB 2174 were drafted by officials at Roeland Park, which has fought for years to completely remove restrictions on racist acts that are now illegal to implement but stubbornly remain in the bylaws of certain owners’ associations which no longer exist today.

The legislation is garnering support from other towns, including Overland Park and Lawrence, and is also drawing attention to Prairie Village, which has dealt with its own legacy of racist housing clauses, and is asking its diversity committee to discuss of the issue at its meeting this month. .

Cities would have more power to suppress racist language. Roeland Park Town Administrator Keith Moody said the town’s main problem was the fact that there were no longer any active homeowners associations at Roeland Park. Current state law states that only HOAs can remove discriminatory language from their bylaws, and if there is no active HOA, there is no agency to do so and no one to hold. responsible for the racist language that remains in the books, Moody said. Bills introduced in Topeka this week would change state law to allow cities to remove discriminatory language from the dish or from a set of covenants and restrictions registered with the dish. Two JoCo Democrats introduced the bills, Senator Ethan Corson, a Democrat from Fairway, and State Rep. Rui Xu, a Democrat from Westwood, introduced the bills in their respective chambers. While such racial covenants are no longer legally enforceable, Corson said, he thinks it’s still important to give cities and counties the ability to remove language to reaffirm communities’ commitment to diversity. and inclusiveness. I think it’s a painful holdover from the bad times in our history when this happened, Corson said. Xu said it was important to specifically show black and Jewish members of the community that this is definitely not something our part of the country represents. I can only imagine being black or Jewish and then owning a home with that kind of language about your act and the strong desire for it to go away, Xu said. A house in Roeland Park, which no longer has any active homeowners associations. Photo Credit Juliana Garcia Covenants locked out black and Jewish home buyers Driven by developers like JC Nichols, the population of northeast Johnson County exploded nearly a century ago, but many of these news planned subdivisions came with restrictions that explicitly excluded black and Jewish homebuyers. In a letter in support of the new legislation, Roeland Park officials included language from one of the city’s former homeowners associations that houses should never be sold or rented to “any person of black blood or [to] anyone who is more than one quarter of Semitic race, blood, origin or ancestry”. The need for change is evident, reads the letter from the city. We should not tolerate even the vestiges of racism.

Read the city’s full letter below:

Loading… Senate bill slated for hearing Feb. 9 Corson said the hearing before the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee will include testimony from cities, real estate agents and hopefully , community members. We were excited to hear he was going to have a hearing, we hoped that would result in his removal from the committee and the possibility of a vote on the Senate floor, Moody said. Xu said he hadn’t heard any backlash or negative comments about the bill and didn’t expect much opposition.

Go deeper: Restrictions on racist acts remain in northeast Johnson County, but removing them has proven difficult

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