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Yolo completes multi‑year AB 1466 project to redact historic racist deed covenants, publishes searchable map
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Summary
Yolo County completed a four‑year project to digitize 2.3 million records, identify 1,172 documents containing discriminatory restrictive covenants affecting about 8,187 parcels, and implemented redactions under Assembly Bill 1466 with Stanford partnership and county counsel review; county created maps and a research portal preserving original records while removing offensive language from public displays.
Yolo County Recorder/Assessor Jesse Salinas reported March 3 that the county has completed a multi‑year effort to implement Assembly Bill 1466, the statewide law enabling counties to modify and redact historic racially discriminatory restrictive covenants in deed records.
What the county did: Salinas said the recorder’s office digitized and OCR’d roughly 2.3 million pages of historical deed and covenant material dating back to the mid‑19th century. The county used an algorithmic language search developed in partnership with Stanford University to find candidate documents, then county counsel and assessor staff reviewed items for legal sufficiency before applying a modification that preserves the original language in the permanent record while redacting offensive text from public view.
Scope and scale: Staff identified 1,172 documents that contained discriminatory language; those entries corresponded to about 8,187 parcels. The county mapped clusters of affected subdivisions, produced timeline visualizations showing when the covenants were most prevalent (notably in the 1940s and 1950s), and created a public research resource that preserves the original documents for scholarly use while providing redacted versions for general public access.
Why it matters: While such covenants have been legally unenforceable since the 1960s, Salinas said their continued presence in public records was a symbolic and real reminder of discriminatory policies. The county’s implementation both preserves the archival record and makes the public face of property records non‑discriminatory. Salinas said the work positioned Yolo as an early adopter and model for other counties and saved local resources by partnering with Stanford for the language‑detection work.
Next steps: The county plans to publish the searchable site and invited local educators and researchers to use the maps and timeline as teaching tools.
Officials and partners: The project involved the recorder’s office, county counsel, county archives, GIS and IT staff, and Stanford researchers; the board praised staff for the effort and noted the action as a local equity initiative.
