The Westchester Brief | 06.23.26: Erase the Racist Clause in Your Deed

For decades, thousands of Westchester County deeds have carried restrictive covenants, clauses that once barred homes from being sold to people of certain races, religions, or ethnic backgrounds. They've been unenforceable since 1948, but the language stayed in the records. This episode explains a new process, effective June 3 under New York Real Property Law Section 327-a, that lets property owners formally redact those discriminatory covenants from their recorded deeds through the Westchester County Clerk's office, how the administrative process works, and why so few residents know it exists.

In This Episode:
(0:00) The sentence buried in your deed
(1:00) What restrictive covenants are and how they spread
(2:30) The new law: Section 327-a and the Clerk's form
(3:45) How the redaction process actually works
(5:00) Quick hit: the county's $25 million Housing Flex Fund II

Sources: Westchester County Clerk (Land Records Forms, RPL Section 327-a redaction); New York Real Property Law Section 327-a.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

There may be a sentence buried in the deed to your home that once said people like your neighbors were not welcome here. It has been illegal to enforce for decades, but it is still there in the official record. As of this month, you can finally erase it. This is the Westchester Brief. I'm Jim. Let's get into it. For much of the 20th century, homes across Westchester were sold with what are called restrictive covenants, clauses written directly into the deed that barred the property from being sold to people of certain races, religions, or ethnic backgrounds, black families, Jewish families, and others were explicitly excluded, in writing, in the legal record of the home. The Supreme Court made these covenants unenforceable in 1948, and later fair housing laws made them illegal. But unenforceable is not the same as gone, the language stayed in the deeds. For decades, a homeowner who pulled the history of their own property could find in plain text a clause stating that their own family would not have been allowed to buy it. This was not a handful of isolated documents. In the decades after World War II, as Westchester's suburbs filled in, entire subdivisions were laid out with these covenants written in from the start. Developers used them as a selling point. Banks and the federal government reinforced them through lending practices that steered who could buy where. The result is that the discriminatory language runs through the property records of some of the county's most established neighborhoods. That changed this month. Effective June 3rd, under a New York state law known as Real Property Law Section 327 Seomat A. Property owners in Westchester can now formally redact an unlawful discriminatory covenant from their recorded deed. The Westchester County Clerk's Office has posted the form to do it in the land records section of its website. Here is how it works. The covenant is not scrubbed from history. The historical record is preserved, so the wrong is not hidden. Instead, the owner files a form that legally strikes the discriminatory language from the active deed and marks it as the unlawful relic it is. It is a way of formally closing the book on a clause that should never have been written. Why does this matter beyond the symbolism? First, it is something a resident can actually do. If you own a home built before the 1960s, especially in one of the county's older planned neighborhoods, there is a real chance this language sits in your records. Now there is a clear official process to remove it. The process is meant to be straightforward. A property owner requests the form from the county clerk, identifies the offending language in the deed, and files to have that language struck. There is no court case required. It is an administrative step designed so an ordinary homeowner can take it without hiring a lawyer. It also matters as history. These covenants are part of how segregation was built into the suburb, not by accident, but by design, one deed at a time. Acknowledging that and giving owners a way to formally reject it is a small but concrete act of repair. What remains unanswered is how many people will use it. The law's new, the process is quiet, and most homeowners do not know the clause is there in the first place. The county has the form ready. The open question is whether residents will know to ask for it. Here is what else is happening across Westchester this week. The county is now accepting applications for its second housing flex fund, a twenty five million dollar pool aimed at affordable housing. It offers up to two hundred thousand dollars per project to push stalled developments over the line and into construction. Applications are open through August 21st. That is your brief for today. If this is the kind of reporting you want more of, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a neighbor who lives here too. Troy. I'm Jim, and I live here. I'll see you tomorrow.