When Salt Lake's 1st racist housing covenants took shape
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In the early 1910s, Sugar House was booming — and racist.
- This is Old News, where we trace the maps of Utah's past.
What drove the news: 113 years ago this week, housing developers began promoting whites-only housing contracts in Salt Lake.
- The developer of Westmoreland Place, now an affluent historic district near 1500 East and 1300 South, was the first to announce racist restrictions.
What they said: "This idea seems to be proving very satisfactory to would-be home builders," the Salt Lake Tribune reported in 1913. "This system of selling residence sites has been tried out in southern California with great success."
- Buyers gobbled up the lots in the following weeks, by what the newspaper described as "a better class of people."
Zoom out: The restrictions spread south, to Highland Park, where the developer Kimball & Richards bragged that such "building regulations protect your home."
The big picture: Once those contracts effectively segregated SLC neighborhoods, the city was "redlined" in the 1930s.
- The federal Home Owners' Loan Corp. drew up maps that labeled white neighborhoods "desirable" and others "hazardous" for lenders.
- That blocked families of color from homeownership and prevented investment in those communities, creating racial divides that persist today in many U.S. cities.
The latest: Racist housing covenants haven't been legally enforceable since the 1960s, but the language still appears on some property records.
- Lawmakers in 2021 created a mechanism for county recorders to revise the documents at homeowners' request.
Go deeper: When rumors of segregated zoning unleashed a torrent of racism in Salt Lake