Policymakers and activists fight to remove pro-segregation, anti-immigrant provisions from property deeds.
Wufei Yu
March 15, 2021
From the
print edition
Five years ago, Albuquerque-born Lan Sena considered purchasing land at the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. She found a property in the Four Hills area, where elegant houses coexist with cholla cactus on rolling hills. A horrifying clause in the property’s covenant nauseated her.
An aerial view of the Northeast Heights community in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1969. Racially restrictive covenants have still been found in the deeds from many properties in this community.
Albuquerque Museum
“When we pulled up the deed of the property, it had that language in there that Asians and African Americans could not live on the land unless they were slaves,” Sena said. She ultimately didn’t buy the land. As the 31-year-old daughter of two Vietnamese refugees who came to the Southwestern city in 1975 and 1981, respectively, through a federal resettlement program, she was deeply offended. In March 2020, Sena was appointed to the city council, the first Asian American ever to hold the position. “We have always been here,” Sena told me. “So when I got into office, I said this (language) was very unacceptable to me and I want it out.”