Backed by a new state law, the city of Roeland Park is working to remove racist deed restrictions from its local property records.
After a years-long effort to erase such racially restrictive covenants from local plats and deeds, the Roeland Park City Council earlier this month unanimously approved a resolution that allows the city’s legal counsel to work on officially removing the discriminatory language from property records.
Councilmember Jan Faidley thanked the city’s legal staff and former councilmember Michael Rebne, whose persistence led to the city getting to this point.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve got,” Faidley said. “I think it’s something that can be used by other communities in Kansas that share perhaps a similar history with Roeland Park.”
The council’s approval at its July 1 meeting came months after Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed House Bill 2562 into law. That measure offers homeowners and cities an easier way to remove racist covenants from their property records.
Roeland Park appears to be the first city in Johnson County to take action based on this new law. The city of Mission is also set to discuss the law at a committee meeting on Wednesday, July 10.
Racist deed language has been on the books for decades
- Like in other cities across the Kansas City metro, language explicitly barring Black and Jewish people from owning homes in certain, mostly suburban areas has been embedded in the bylaws of local homes associations and subdivisions’ rules.
- Racist deeds and exclusionary covenants have been unenforceable on a federal level since the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer.
- Homeowners today are often unaware that the language even exists in their deeds, but some residents and city officials in northeast Johnson County have argued that the lingering language is a stain on their communities.
- In Prairie Village, for example, at least two homes associations have dealt with racist language in their books.
- This includes the Prairie Village Homes Association, which adopted a resolution in 2007 that revoked racist deed restriction provisions — the only action such an organization could take regarding such exclusionary language up until the new law went into effect.
Roeland Park struggled for years to get rid of the language
- Roeland Park has worked for years to figure out how to remove racist deed restrictions from property records.
- With no active homes associations in the city, Roeland Park has been unable to know which plats and corresponding documents had racist language on their deeds.
- Roeland Park outlawed racist covenants in 2020, and worked with state legislators last year to introduce bills to give cities more power to remove historically restrictive language.
- The city has since identified plats and covenants with discriminatory language, city officials previously told the Post.
The process will take about a month
- The resolution approved on July 1 allows city staff, including the city attorney, to compile a list of all restrictive covenants on deeds or plats within Roeland Park.
- Then, the city needs to record a certificate of release with the county’s register of deeds to prohibit the exclusionary covenants, according to city documents.
- The month-long process will be paid for through the city attorney budget line in Roeland Park’s general fund, according to city documents.
- It is estimated that this will cost the city $5,000 or less of its annual $130,000 city attorney budget.
Go deeper: Watch the city council’s discussion from July 1 online here, starting at 1:13:44.
