OGDEN – Dating back to the 1940s, there were parts of Ogden where colored people simply couldn’t live.
It was not about economics, custom, or social pressures, however important such factors may be in determining where people live. In documents in which development schemes of certain parts of the city, so-called protective alliances, are set out, the racial restrictions were clearly stated.
“No person or people of a race other than the Caucasian race may use or occupy buildings or land in this subdivision,” states a contract dated June 18, 1947 for the Hillcrest Addition. This is the residential area on Ogden’s East Bench between Tyler and Taylor Avenues to the east and west and 30th and 32nd Streets to the north and south.
Jennifer Gnagey, Associate Professor at Weber State University.
The document goes further, with the exception of “Domestic Servants of Another Race Residing with an Owner or Tenant” from the restriction. But the intent seems pretty clear – blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and others were not welcome. And Jennifer Gnagey, an associate professor of economics at Weber State University, has started rummaging through Ogden’s old property records to see how common such racial alliances were here.
So far, she has uncovered three such agreements on the Weber County Recorders Office’s records, including the Hillcrest Addition document, and she is continuing her research. She can’t tell how widespread restrictive agreements have been, but such practices can have ramifications over time and affect neighborhoods development, she said.
“People often think that state-sanctioned housing segregation is something that only happened in the south. In fact, however, numerous policies and practices have been used in the northern and western states to create and maintain segregated neighborhoods, “Gnagey said in a Weber state press release.
Indeed, race treaties, banned by the federal government’s 1968 Fair Housing Act, were “ubiquitous” across the country, according to research by the University of Minnesota on the subject. “Alliances were embedded in title deeds across the country to keep people who were ignorant from buying or even occupying land. Their popularity is well documented in St. Louis. Seattle; Chicago; Hartford, Connecticut; Kansas City and Washington DC, ”says the website of the University of Minnesota, which deals with the topic of Mapping Prejudice.
For Gnagey, who delves into various housing issues in Ogden, including housing affordability and tenant rights, understanding past housing practices can affect the present. “I think this is a story that has been purposely forgotten for 80-90 years,” she said.
She has also looked at redlining in Ogden, the historic practice of not borrowing funds to buy homes in areas deemed financially risky. Redlining has been widely used across the country in areas with high minority populations to deter them from owning property, according to Weber state press release on Gnagey’s work.
Over time, Gnagey said, redlining made it harder for minorities to own home, excluding them from the equity that built up over time from owning a home and reducing their ability to pass inheritance funds on to their heirs. This in turn makes it difficult for future generations to buy houses.
A 1931 map compiled as part of an effort by the federal government to break down real estate credit risks known as redlining shows Ogden. Jennifer Gnagey, an associate professor at Weber State University, found the card as part of her research on urban housing discrimination.
“Once you understand that we got here through institutional practices, I think it becomes very clear that we are going to need some policy changes to break down these patterns,” she said. As part of her research, she found a map drawn up by the federal government from 1931, similar to maps in other cities, which divides Ogden into zones of different quality, from “best” and “still desirable” to “definitely in decline” and “definitely in decline “Dangerous. “
The impact of the card on lending practices in Ogden is not clear. However, the current configuration of the city with a different mix of more affluent and more humble neighborhoods suggests Gnagey a need to change to better integrate those with different income levels in order to make housing construction more equitable across the board. Nowadays, she said, zoning rules can be used to separate different populations.
The other race treaties that Gnagey has uncovered so far concerned the Browne Barr subdivision in Ogden, inked in 1944, and the Country Club Heights subdivision in what is now South Ogden, signed in 1941. Browne Barr covers the neighborhood between Harrison Boulevard and Iowa Avenue from west and east with 30th and 32nd Streets north and south. Country Club Heights is south of 40th Street and west of Ogden Golf and Country Club.
The Brown Barr and Country Club Heights alliances had a similar language to the Hillcrest Addition Alliance. Gnagey discovered her by rummaging through old land registry entries, and she has a state weaver student who will support her in the future.
She and her research assistant plan to be at the Weber County Recorder’s Office every Tuesday from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. this summer whenever homeowners need help finding alliances on their property. A law passed by Legislature earlier this year, House Bill 374, gives homeowners the option to change their property arrangements for free.
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