Rina Sudan bought a house in Austin’s Hancock neighborhood last June.
When she was rifling through stacks of old documents shoved into a kitchen drawer, she found what’s called a restrictive covenant a private contract passed from owner to owner detailing what you can build on your land. For example, it restricted anyone from building a duplex or a home taller than two stories.
It also restricted anyone of “African descent” from owning or renting there. Sudan, who is white, said she’d heard of racial restrictive covenants but had never seen one applied to a place where she lived.