Tucson Standard

When Jason Jurjevich and his husband Charles Walker purchased a home near the University of Arizona campus in 2021, they encountered racist covenants in the property's deed. These covenants, although unenforceable since 1948 and illegal since 1968, explicitly prohibited Asian or Black individuals from residing in the subdivision unless they were servants to white homeowners.

Jurjevich, an assistant professor at UArizona's School of Geography, Development and the Environment, decided to address this issue by creating the Mapping Racist Covenants project. This initiative aims to document and map these covenants across Pima County. The project not only visualizes where such covenants existed but also tracks their removal over time.

Jurjevich stated that his goal was to initiate community discussions about housing discrimination's legacy. "We as community members need to be part of a conversation that talks about the history of racist covenants as part of a larger legacy of housing discrimination that affects and denies opportunities for people of color and other marginalized communities," he said.

The project's impact extended beyond academic circles when Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed Senate Bill 1432 into law. This legislation allows homeowners to remove unlawful restrictions like racist covenants from property records. Jurjevich contributed research data during the bill's drafting process.

Historically, racist covenants were used by neighborhood associations as legal tools for segregation after a 1917 Supreme Court decision banned racial ordinances by cities. These practices were widespread across Tucson, affecting numerous subdivisions.

Jurjevich's team included students and faculty who worked on collecting data from county records dating back to before 1982 when most documents were not digitized. They developed software to identify discriminatory language in deeds and created a user-friendly website allowing public access to these records.

The project has been downloaded over 1,500 times since its launch last fall. Community involvement was highlighted during an event in August where locals shared personal experiences with racist covenants. Delano Price recounted how such restrictions shaped his upbringing in Tucson.

Reflecting on the broader implications of these findings, Jurjevich expressed hope for future expansions of the project, potentially incorporating oral histories and exploring connections between housing inequality and other societal issues.

"When we start to connect housing inequality with discrimination and broad denial of opportunity," Jurjevich said, "the links to present-day injustices become apparent."