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 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com CHEN LYU Daily Staff Reporter The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Winter 2023 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. 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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