@qole Sorry, I just realized that I didn't answer your last question directly. What they restrict, specifically, is what can be built on the property, rather than who it can be sold to like the discriminatory "white only" covenants. That means in theory that if a developer buys the property they would be restricted to building a single-family house on it, and not a duplex or fourplex.

But as has been discussed in this thread... restrictive covenants are not enforceable if you simply pay to have a lawyer remove them. So in the end, they're not restricting big developers with deep pockets, they're only restricting themselves and any private home owner who might want to buy it.

The covenants themselves in this case are not as harmful as the divisive politics and hateful rhetoric that surrounds them. That is the part which is destroying my neighborhood.

The way people are behaving over this has gotten scary...

@qole They have been revived big time in Edmonton and Calgary as part of a far-right push against progressive urban City Councils, after politicizing the goal of urban densification through infill housing (basically, just splitting up a property lot into two to build houses with a smaller footprint, building upwards instead of outwards). These allow more living units to inhabit the same land space. A typical infill is a duplex, and you could have 2 of those duplexes where a single house with front and back yard used to stand.

Large municipalities always end up left-leaning because they service the needs of many and need to build sustainable cities to survive into the future. So the right attacks municipalities at the provincial/state level, the same way they attack academics for leaning left.

The anti-infill propaganda is just a continuation of the former conspiracy theories against "15 minute cities".

The push against infills is inherently classist but less on the surface than "white only" communities. It's steeped in NIMBY arguments that bringing in new people will bring down the property values of existing owners, and the fear that these smaller units will house more of "the poors" in their neighborhood. You let them argue about it long enough, and they'll reach racism eventually. In the end, they just don't want new people moving into their neighborhood.

The biggest argument being used against infills and blasted through every propaganda machine pushed by divisive politics, is that they don't provide more parking for cars. As our entire city isn't already dedicated as a big massive parking lot for cars with no space for human beings to walk, nevermind live!

Which again goes towards the argument that only the rich can be allowed in our mature suburban neighborhoods, because the poors actually like to get around with active transportation, and aren't confined to an automobile just to get to the neighborhood store or school. "The poors" are fighting for walkability and inclusive infrastructure, which is against the goal of the anti-infill crowd who wants to promote urban sprawl like the 80's.

So on the surface there's no racism... but classism and segregation is embedded deep into the roots of this process. Anti-urbanism always ends in bigotry, when all other arguments are shot down. Keep debunking them, and they'll finally reach that "Ah, there it is" moment.

@ned This is Redlining. A racist, segregation practice that was observed in both Canada and the US.

I think the practice was much more well documented in the US mainly because the practice was highlighted in an obtuse fashion with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. A black child was denied enrolment to a school that was closer to her home because it was a school in a white neighbourhood and was effectively a white school. So the public school system enrolled the child to a black school much farther away.

This triggered a constitutional challenge against what was a practice of segregation. What this revealed was a wide spread, systematic practice of banks, realtors, and other service providers that effectively pinned people by race and forced them to live in specific neighbourhoods. But, like many things systemically broken about the US, the Supreme Court simply acknowledged the issue without providing any meaningful solution.

Safe to say that the practice continues in various forms on both sides of the border into the modern day.

#Yeg #Edmonton #Yyc #Calgary

#AbLeg #AbPoli #CdnPoli

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining