Nassau Officials Propose Legislation On Racist Housing Covenants

MINEOLA, NY — Nassau County lawmakers have introduced legislation that they hope will create a database of racially restrictive covenants within property deeds on Nassau County.

Nassau County Legislators Carrié Solages of Valley Stream and Arnie Drucker of Plainview introduced legislation that aims to uncover legal property documents within racially discriminatory covenants that were historically intended to prevent Black Americans, Jews and Asian Americans from buying and renting property in certain neighborhoods. The database would help educate the public and government on how structural racism shaped law, public policy, socioeconomic opportunities and education.

The proposal comes following a 2019 Newsday investigation into housing discrimination on Long Island. The three-year investigation found "evidence of widespread separate and unequal treatment of minority potential homebuyers and minority communities on Long Island," one of the nation's most segregated suburbs. Nassau County ranked as the most segregated county in the country, according to data from the 2010 census, the most recent performed at the time of the investigation.

The investigation into discrimination by real estate agents found Black buyers faced disparate treatment compared to whites 49 percent of the time they enlisted brokers. Hispanics faced discrimination 39 percent and Asians experienced disparate treatment 19 percent of the time.

In proposing the legislation, Solages and Drucker were joined by CEO of the Long Island Board of Realtors Tessa Hultz, chairperson of the Social Work Department and Faculty President of Molloy College Dr. Lisa Zakiya Newland, executive director of the Sustainability Institute at Molloy College Neal Lewis, and Levittown resident Michael Sheridan.