It’s hard to believe that it was once legal for Homeowners Associations to outlaw the sale of homes to anyone of the ‘wrong’ race. But that’s the shameful racist background of the HOA movement. Homeowners Associations across America once banned the sale of homes to most minorities. It took some brave pioneers to break the HOA racial barriers.
Now, one of those pioneers has died at the age of 85.
I’ve seen seemingly normal neighbors turn into backstabbers, liars and some of the most unreasonable people you’ve ever met. I have seen neighbors hook up, break up, and then turn into complete psychopaths.
Treading where angels fear to go, a columnist for the Press-Enterprise in Inland Southern California wades into the swamp of HOA racism. He ponders whether a Sun City HOA there is racist, because it wouldn’t allow the NAACP to use its meeting house.
Certainly, racism is an oft-documented problem in American HOAs. There are too many such cases to even count. And subtle racism is even harder to measure. But many HOAs across the country have either no minorities at all, or percentages as small as one or two percent. While that’s no way to measure racial divides, it can make one pause and reflect.
