Nassau County pols want database of communities with racial covenants

A pair of Nassau County legislators want to create an official database of housing developments with racially restrictive covenants, according to Newsday. Developers used covenants to keep Black, Asian, and Jewish people from buying homes and from homeowners selling to them. They became unenforceable with the 1968 Housing Rights Act but are still written into deeds. Levittown, built in the years after World War II, is one of the best known examples of a hamlet with a racial covenant. Democratic legislators Carrié Solages and Arnold Drucker are sponsoring the bill to create the database. Republicans, who control the county legislature with an 11-8 majority, were noncommittal, saying the bill “does not appear [to accomplish] anything that cannot be done already.” [Newsday] – Dennis Lynch