When Ann Arbor resident Anne
Hiller first moved to ‘Tree City’
from the San Francisco Bay Area
in 2004, she was looking forward
to settling in the Wildwood Park
subdivision, a scenic suburban
neighborhood
surrounded
by
nature on the city’s west side. Before
she was about to close the deal on
her house, however, Hiller noticed
that her deed contained an archaic
clause — a racially restrictive
covenant that read “No portion of
the land herein described should be
occupied by persons other than the
Caucasian race, except as servants
or guests.”
Though Hiller does not identify
as a person of Color, she wrote in
an email to The Michigan Daily
that seeing the covenant appalled
her. When she asked for the line to
be removed from the deed, Hiller
claimed she was told that wouldn’t
be possible because it would require
a large majority of homeowners
across the neighborhood to vote
to eliminate the covenant from all
deeds in the subdivision. She would
have to either sign the document as
it was or pass on the house.
“(I)
asked
to
strike
the
sentence during the actual closing
appointment,” Hiller wrote. “The
title company officer explained
the deed covenants and why it
wasn’t possible, and then said ‘but
it’s okay because the language
isn’t enforceable.’ It was a stain on
the day. I didn’t like signing my
name to that language, but my only
alternative was to walk away from
the house.”
An effort led by a small but
mighty coalition of advocates,
“Welcoming Neighborhood,” has
recently changed that. By the end
of 2022, Welcoming Neighborhood
helped Wildwood Park pass an
amendment eliminating the racially
restrictive
covenants
in
their
neighborhood. Hiller, who ended
up joining the coalition, personally
worked to collect and verify resident
signatures so that the covenants
could be permanently eliminated.
Hiller told The Daily that
any changes to the Wildwood
Park
deed
required
approval
from homeowners representing
two-thirds
of
the
property
values
comprising
the
entire
neighborhood. Though collecting
the signatures was a challenge,
Hiller said it paid off with the
eventual
repealment
of
the
covenants.
“Right out of the gate, we
attained 60% of the (signature)
threshold during a 2-hour ‘cider
and donuts kick-off,’” Hiller wrote.
“(We) exceeded the two-thirds
threshold in just 6 weeks.”
Wildwood Park was one of 13
neighborhoods developed in the
1910s and 1920s on the west side of
Ann Arbor that instituted racially
restrictive policies. During that
time, Catherine Street and Miller
Avenue became a demographic fault
line
separating
predominantly-
white
neighborhoods
like
Arborview and Wildwood from
neighborhoods like Waterhill and
Kerrytown, which were historically
the heart of the Black community in
Ann Arbor.
While restrictive policies were
deemed unenforceable across the
nation by the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1948, the restrictive covenants
and discrimination in home sales
continued to plague the Ann Arbor
housing market until the city
passed a fair housing ordinance
in 1963. While the ordinance
barred new development from
instituting
racially
restrictive
policies it did not provide a way to
remove existing racially restrictive
language from existing deeds.
That’s why the covenants, though
unenforceable, still exist in housing
deeds like Hiller’s in more than 120
neighborhoods across Washtenaw
County, according to research
conducted by Justice InDeed, a
University
of
Michigan-based
collaborative project aiming to map
where the covenants still exist in
the county.
Ann Arbor’s Hannah subdivision
became the first neighborhood
in the state of Michigan to repeal
the racially restrictive language
in all of the deeds to properties
in the neighborhood in February
2022. In an interview with The
Daily, Tom Crawford, a resident of
Wildwood Park, which is located
right next to Hannah subdivision,
said the work of Justice InDeed
educated him about the remnants
of
racial
discrimination
in
Wildwood deeds and motivated
him to organize community events
to advocate for the repealment of
racially restrictive covenants in his
neighborhood.
2 — Wednesday, February 22, 2023
News
FEATURE PHOTO
Wildwood Park community eliminates racially
restrictive covenants
Over 120 communities in Ann Arbor still have racially exclusive language in deeds
ANN ARBOR
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EMMA MATI/Daily
LSA senior Rayven Brantley serves food at “An Exploration of African American Cuisine” hosted by Organizational Studies and the Department of Sociology at the LSA Building
Friday afternoon.
University
of
Michigan
researchers
published
a
sustainability-focused
study
in
January
2023,
comparing
the
environmental impacts of reusable
plastic containers to single-use
containers. The researchers studied
a program launched by the non-
profit Live Zero Waste in Ann
Arbor where customers can request
a reusable carryout food container
from
a
participating
business.
Customers then have to clean the
container after use and return it back
to the business whenever they have
time. Several local restaurants such
as Zingerman’s Next Door Café, El
Harissa, Ginger Deli and Cinnaholic
participate in the program.
The
researchers
evaluated
elements of the program such
as cost, water use and consumer
behavior to determine whether
using a reusable container was more
sustainable than single-use takeout
boxes. Their results determined that
on the surface, reusable containers
have lower environmental impacts
than their single-use counterparts.
The study flagged that the emissions
from the transportation required to
return the reusable containers might
make them less sustainable than they
seem.
According to Samuel McMullen,
the executive director and co-founder
of Live Zero Waste, Zingerman’s
initially came up with the idea of
offering reusable takeout containers
in 2021 to support Ann Arbor’s
commitment to carbon neutrality.
Because of the city’s previous
environmental
and
recycling
initiatives,
McMullen
said
he
believed Ann Arbor was the perfect
place to pioneer the program. The
nonprofit Recycle Ann Arbor collects
curbside recycling throughout the
city and strongly encourages citizens
to reuse materials when possible.
McMullen said Live Zero Waste was
able to work with Recycle Ann Arbor
to pilot their program.
“We
have
a
really
unique
opportunity in Ann Arbor to work
with the recycler, which opens up
just so many logistics opportunities,”
McMullen said. “They already have
trucks. We could, in (the future),
collect recycling and returnable
containers on the same routes. It’s a
huge opportunity that very few other
places in the country have the ability
to test.”
McMullen said businesses that
have regular customers are ideal
candidates for the program because
if they make the switch to reusable
containers once, they may be more
likely to continue to use them when
coming back for another meal.
“El Harrisa has been a really high
performer,” McMullen said. “They
do north of 50 containers a week.
They also have good regulars which
is something that really lends itself
to a restaurant with a sort of similar
clientele coming back because they
can make returning their containers
part of their habit.”
The program has been around for
two years, but until now there hasn’t
been any research on how much it’s
actually helping the environment.
The January study was co-written
by Environment and Sustainability
graduate student Christian Hitt
and Engineering graduate student
Jacob Douglas under the guidance
of Gregory Keoleian, Engineering
and SEAS professor. The researchers
found that after just five — or in
some cases, fewer than five — uses,
the reusable containers had a net
positive impact on the environment
over disposable ones.
However, if customers started
making additional trips to return
the
containers
to
restaurants,
the
program
could
harm
the
environment more than it helps. The
researchers found that if even 5% of
customers made an extra car trip
to return their takeout containers,
the program would contribute more
greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere
than single-use containers.
Douglas said he believes the
program would work best in a
walkable city where customers could
return their containers without
creating any additional emissions.
“If you’re in a rural area, and
people are driving 10 miles just to
return their container, (reusable
takeout containers are) going to
be way worse than just having
disposable containers,” Douglas said.
“But if you’re in a city where people
could walk and return the containers
then the system can be a little bit
more flexible.”
Douglas said the research team
was not able to find out how many
times containers can be reused before
they break or become unusable.
“There’s the potential that they
can be reused like hundreds of times,
but in all likelihood, they’re not being
reused that many times and people
might steal them or they might
break them,” Douglas said. “If the
container gets reused many times,
that’s sort of the best-case scenario.”
Going forward, Hitt said the team
is looking into different types of
materials that could be used to make
reusable containers as durable and
sustainable as possible.
“One of the big ones we’re looking
at is bringing in different types of
reusable materials such as stainless
steel,” Hitt said.
LSA sophomore Melissa Oz, a
student ambassador at Planet Blue,
a campus organization focused on
sustainability at the University,
said though she hasn’t used the
program yet, she thinks it could be
an environmentally-friendly option
for students who walk downtown
to get takeout at the participating
locations.
UMich study reveals environmental impact of reusable
carryout containers
Researchers examine environmental benefits and drawbacks of reusable
carryout program in Ann Arbor
ISABELLA KASSA
Daily News Reporter
RESEARCH
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com