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Los Gatos resident Gordon Yamate remembers overhearing a conversation between his parents when he was in third grade. They had decided to move back to the West Valley from San Jose, but didn't feel comfortable returning to his mother's hometown of Los Gatos. The rejection by developers was subtle but clear -- Asian American families needed to look elsewhere.
The family moved to Saratoga where the Asian American community was welcomed.
Yamate believes racially restrictive covenants -- language in property deeds -- have something to do with his family's decision. That was in the 1960s, but the same language explicitly stating a home should not be sold to people of color still exists on thousands of deeds in Santa Clara County today.
The discriminatory language isn't legal and hasn't been enforceable since 1948. Yet by 1950, nearly one in four homes countywide included deeds with the language, according to Stanford University data.
Yamate, chair of the Los Gatos Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission, is working in Los Gatos to redact the harmful language and inform his community about its past alongside the county. Los Gatos has about 130 covenants, according to Stanford, and there could be more. There are hundreds in the county's unincorporated hills bordering the town.
Yamate said his family's past, which includes his mother's time in a Wyoming Japanese American internment camp, led him to investigate the covenants, along with finding racist language in his Los Angeles home's deed.
"This is how we got here," he told San José Spotlight. "This is how we became one of the most segregated communities in Northern California."
A widespread problem
The Santa Clara County Clerk-Recorder's Office began looking into problem and redacting language in 2022 after Assembly Bill 1466 was signed into law. The bill required counties statewide to begin programs identifying and redacting the language from property documents. The county has gone through about 25% of the roughly 24 million property deeds in collaboration with Stanford RegLab researchers who trained artificial intelligence to recognize the language.
The university's modern solution to a decades-old problem is a first among nationwide efforts, RegLab Research Fellow Faiz Surani said. Stanford released data in October analyzing about 5.2 million pages of property deeds from 1865 to 1980. The data revealed 10 developers were responsible for nearly one-third of the racist language in deeds.
Surani's apartment was once one of the properties subject to these covenants, with the clause that it "shall never be occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race."
"This is not something that's in a book. This is the way things were, and to a great extent, still are," Surani told San José Spotlight.
The county aims to finish processing the documents by 2027. It will archive original deeds, but redact the language online and elsewhere.
Louis Chiaramonte, assistant county clerk-recorder, said the project is personal to him as someone with Sicilian and Native American heritage. He said there were many of these covenants near where he grew up in Santa Clara County.
"These are historical actions that occurred way long ago that really should have never occurred," he told San José Spotlight. "Ultimately, we're doing the right thing to make sure that it is corrected now."
Redwood Estates, an unincorporated mountain community about 6.5 miles from Los Gatos, has about 790 restrictive covenants, according to Stanford data. The communities surrounding Redwood Estates push the number to about 1,000.
Cheryl Hargrove, a resident who lived in the estates for five years and is building her future home there, said most people don't know about the discriminatory language. As a person of color, she'd like to see the community informed.
"I would just want (the language to be) changed, more than anything," she told San José Spotlight. "People should be made aware. Knowledge is power."
Other hotspots include the area near the Los Altos Country Club, which has more than 600 covenants, and Stanford University Villa, which has about 240. Oak Hill Cemetery has 41 covenants stating only a white person can be buried in certain plots.
The hotspots likely shaped the demographics of today's neighborhoods, Alexandra Thompson, New Museum Los Gatos registrar and history programs manager, said. The museum has been in touch with the county and is exploring an exhibit on the subject.
Thompson said the fact that Los Gatos has remained about 67% white, according to 2023 U.S. Census data, while other communities have become more diverse could point to the covenants' effects. In nearby Saratoga, about 60% of residents identify as Asian, compared to about 34% white.
"It didn't just happen that way -- it was designed in some way right?" she told San José Spotlight. "I definitely think they most likely played a role."
Next steps
The county will help residents who know this language is in their deeds, but they have to find it first -- which is tricky even with an address and prior owner information. Chiaramonte said fewer than a dozen of the county's redactions are because of resident requests.
Yamate wants to make that process simpler by talking with title companies who are willing to offer documents for free or at a reduced rate for residents curious if their deeds contain harmful language. He's collaborating with the New Museum to list the companies on its website.
Yamate also wants the Los Gatos Town Council to make a proclamation acknowledging the covenants via a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission recommendation. The town is adding information about the county's program to its website as a result of the commission's efforts.
"Hopefully we can show what impact it's had on the town," he told San José Spotlight. "We need to think about making sure that Los Gatos doesn't take any more action that would continue that type of thinking."
Los Gatos Mayor Matthew Hudes said he wasn't well informed about the topic, but would consider it with the recommendation.
Surani said just because the covenants aren't enforceable, doesn't mean they don't cause harm. He said community awareness is vital.
"It's one thing to find them and remove them. But if a covenant is redacted and no one's around to see it, did anything really happen?" he said. "This is not like a few random bad apples kind of thing. This is really key to the story of what this place is and how it was built."