Digging Up J.C. Nichols Yet Again: Here's Why Your Home Is Racist

Read this one closely . . . 

Apparently . . . The inability of corporate developers to construct massive tenements near your suburban house is racist . . . Because of admittedly nasty history.

Here's an artful explanation that hopes to turn suburban bliss a bit more desperate . . . 

"Although racial covenants are illegal, other self-renewing restrictions—the zealous attention to land use and building standards propagated by Nichols—remain on the books in many subdivisions across the United States (with many more added to new subdivisions in recent years), helping maintain segregation by race and income. 

Roughly 20 percent of Americans live in an area governed by a homeowners association that enforces restrictive covenants, and Stephen Miller, a professor at the University of Idaho College of Law who has studied housing covenants, told me most covenants contain a standard from the Nichols playbook: a requirement that the lots be used for a single-family-dwelling unit. This particular restriction acts as an extra barrier that overrides municipal zoning codes. 

Even as Americans say they support more low-income housing and want to live in ethnically diverse and walkable communities, the restrictive covenants contribute to the inflated home values that have turned many middle-class neighborhoods into affluent enclaves—not to mention places where you can’t walk to stores, restaurants, or offices, and where, even if they wanted to, developers cannot build multifamily buildings."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

The Man Who Made the Suburbs White

J.C. Nichols pioneered racial covenants in Kansas City's surrounding enclaves. The country is still grappling with them.