Minnesota Social Justice

An article from the Spokesman Recorder referencing various studies.

This data was compiled by the Mapping Prejudice Project and shows the location of racial covenants recorded in Hennepin County between 1910 and 1955. Racial covenants were legal clauses embedded in property records that restricted ownership and occupancy of land parcels based on race. These covenants dramatically reshaped the demographic landscape of Hennepin County in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court ruled racial covenants to be legally unenforceable in the Shelly v. Kraemer decision. Racial covenants continued to be inserted into property records, however, prompting the Minnesota state legislature to outlaw the recording of new racial covenants in 1953. The same legislative body made covenants illegal in 1962. The practice was formally ended nationally with the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

Homeownership, long seen as a key part of the American Dream, is a path to economic prosperity and household wealth for many Americans. Despite one of the nation’s highest overall homeownership rates, Minnesota’s racial and ethnic homeownership gap—that is, the disparity between the White homeownership rate and the homeownership rate of households of color and Native American households—is the fourth-largest in the nation.1 This persistent—and, for some racial and ethnic groups such as Black Minnesotans, increasing—gap has resulted from a series of racist policies and practices. For generations, while government and private financial institutions have actively subsidized homeownership for White households, these institutions have erected barriers that exclude Black households, other households of color, and Native American households from the same opportunities. (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Report)

Urban Institute'r Report:
In the Twin Cities, housing, economic mobility, and racial equity are inextricably linked. The region is home to the largest Black-white homeownership gap in the nation, rising rents, increasing racialized displacement, and limited opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and low-income communities to build wealth through property ownership. In this report, we examine racial gaps in homeownership and displacement as well as the increasing prominence of corporate single-family rental property ownership. This investigation identifies trends at both the neighborhood and county levels and is designed to explore existing conditions. In doing so, we aim to help community organizations and local governments achieve neighborhood stability and equitable recovery in the years ahead.