A new state law in Washington will provide homeownership assistance to members of communities harmed by historical policies that restricted fair access to housing.
The law levies a $100 fee on certain documents recorded by county governments to fund a program that will provide qualified applicants with loans to cover down payments and closing costs associated with buying a home.
The program will cover first-time homebuyers who are Black, indigenous, people of color or from other historically marginalized communities.
Applicants must be state residents or the descendants of residents who were excluded from homeownership "by a racially restrictive real estate covenant," according to the law's text.
State lawmakers proposed the measure earlier this year after academic research commissioned by Washington's legislature identified 50,000 properties in the Seattle area that historically had real estate covenants. Those covenants prevented people of certain races or ethnicities from owning or renting the property.
The legacy of racial housing discrimination is a "dark blot" on the history of the Evergreen State, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday during a signing ceremony. He called the bill one solution to "right a historic wrong of who can access homeownership in our state.
"We're going to use the same system that enabled prejudice and bias in homeownership to do some good and help people obtain houses," said Inslee, a Democrat.
Lawmakers who supported the legislation cited the study that the Legislature commissioned from researchers at the University of Washington and Eastern Washington University.
In addition to identifying properties that historically had restrictive real estate covenants, the
Black families had a 27% homeownership rate, and Latino families had a 35% rate, far behind the 62% rate for white families.
During legislative debates earlier this year, opponents of the measure said that racially restrictive housing policies were resolved with the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. They also argued that the new law is discriminatory because it excludes some ethnic communities that suffered discrimination as immigrants to the U.S. prior to the enactment of the Fair Housing Act.
"The best way to end the scourge of discrimination … is to stop discriminating," said State Sen. Phil Fortunato, a Republican.
Fortunato questioned why the legislation does not cover immigrants who in some cases were historically denied access to homeownership and bank loans.
Washington is the latest state to address historical discrimination by providing financial benefits to victims or their descendants. In 2021, California enacted a law to return a
In 2022, Black families in the United States had 25 cents, and Hispanic families had 23 cents, for every dollar of white family wealth, according to
The Washington state law also comes at a time of heightened public and regulatory scrutiny of the financial system's impact on racial disparities.
The Department of Justice has ramped up investigations of redlining, which involves systematic discrimination in access to financial services in areas based on race or ethnicity.
In January,
Washington State Rep. Jamila Taylor, a Democrat, said during the signing ceremony Monday that the law's enactment shows "history is connected to today's policy.
"We're going towards the things that are most difficult in our communities to face," Taylor said.
