Housing Segregation

The St. Louis Reparations Commission will present its harm report on Sept. 30. Over 100 Black St. Louisans testified why they want reparations and what form they want them to take. The harm report will include dozens of testimonies, history of racism and recommendations for the mayor to bring about a plan to repair racial harms.

Samantha Enlund wants 950 more homeowners to disavow racially restrictive covenants still on the deeds to their homes. The now-illegal restrictions were long used to keep Black people and other ethnic and racial minorities out of white neighborhoods.

A recent study found online rental listings in St. Louis neighborhoods with more poor, Black residents are less likely to include a neighborhood name in their advertisements.

The St. Louis Reparations Commission is preparing to create a race-based harm report for Mayor Tishaura Jones to review next year. Robin Rue Simmons created the Evanston, Illinois, reparations plan and got Evanston’s Black residents the country’s first reparations payout. Simmons talks about her strategy and what St. Louis can do to make its reparations process successful.

Every year since 2017, Missouri has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money as a penalty for the state’s failure to meet the anti-discrimination standards of the federal Fair Housing Act.

How would reparations work in St. Louis? A city commission is taking public comments and preparing a report.

Missouri would join handful of states that have recently enacted laws to remove racially restrictive covenants from property records.

University of Iowa history professor Colin Gordon found that more than 70,000 St. Louis County homes are located in subdivisions that once barred people of color from living in them.

Racial covenants made it illegal for Black people to live in white neighborhoods. Now they're illegal, but you might still have one on your home's deed. And they're hard to remove.

Unlike some states, Missouri doesn’t have a process laid out for homeowners to amend racially restrictive covenants. But some lawyers passionate about the issue are helping homeowners amend them and pushing for lawmakers to do more.