Thurston County auditor expands outreach to remove racially restrictive covenants after statewide research finds more than 1,600 affected parcels

Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall told the Board of County Commissioners on April 29 that the auditor’s office has expanded an outreach program that helps property owners remove racially restrictive covenants from recorded land records.

"Racially restrictive covenants are a really painful legacy, of discrimination, and they really shaped housing," Hall said, describing why the county offered doorstep help and free filing services to clear titles.

The program began with an initial review that identified roughly 300 parcels in 2020, Auditor staff member Emmett O'Connell told commissioners. He said the auditor’s office later provided the county’s full recorded-document archive to researchers at the University of Washington, who used automated methods to identify additional…