“Clause 1 just happens to be ‘Neither the whole or any part of said premises shall be sold, rented or leased to any person or persons not of the White or Caucasian Race.’”

Hey- FOOLS! ANYONE who lives in a tract home ANYWHERE in the US that was developed before 1925ish HAS THAT SAME CLAUSE. It’s nothing to get upset about now. AND the neighbors are not trying to enforce that clause. Live in an old home? GO the to county assessor’s office and look up your old CC&Rs. If your home ever had CCRs, and the CCRs are pre 1930, I’ll eat my hat if you DON’T have the clause in there. You ALL got the same or similar clause in there. I guess you are ALL RACISTS, huh?

“Once a boy enjoyed yelling WOLF when there was none, just to see the villagers scramble to protect their flocks of sheep. Then one day, the boy really DID see a wolf, but no one belived him. All the sheep were killed.”

And so it goes with racism. I’ve been called racist often enough that, when I would have called the cops on ANY purple, green, white, yellow or black crackhead in my front lawn, I’ve realized that the only people screaming racism are people upset at a white person. A hispanic never accuses a black guy of racism.

Of course, unless it’s Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton doing the screaming, every time I hear “Racism” I’ve tuned my white ears off. Naturally, who can blame me if I miss a REAL instance, but I’m no longer going to jump up just because some black idiot sees “racism” in the face of whitey.

posted 9/14/05 at 10:33 am #

Wow, yeah, rock on Squirty Tip. I was going to say the same thing, but without all of the vitriol. I worked in title insurance for a time and yes, that is a very common restriction, the racial one. And in today’s world it is simply disregarded, as are all those which are illegal. It is very common however in older CC&Rs just exactly as stated by the Tipster. So, I would guess, as is the case when these kinds of issues come up, finger pointers are woefully ignorant of the CC&Rs that exist on their own property as opposed to any real racist sentiment. I am not addressing the Church issue however as I have far too little data. I will say however, it can be difficult to tolerate a home functioning as any sort of commercial enterprise because of the increased traffic and the resulting noise and congestion that it brings, as opposed to the practice of religious activity which I don’t find objectionable whatsoever.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:25 am #

Quick Quiz: What does CC&R stand for?

posted 9/14/05 at 11:36 am #

Covenants, Codes, and Restrictions

What do I win!!!

posted 9/14/05 at 11:39 am #

You probably won’t win anything. You guys still owe me a t-shirt from the last contest.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:44 am #

Mr./Ms. Tip, read the article again. Franklin’s residents submitted the list of CC&Rs, that included Clause 1. If it was like Clause 56.4b, I could see how they missed to exclude it. But it was the first one on the page. You don’t leave an obvious clause like that in a submission by accident.

Sorry you feel so traumatized by accusations of racism. If it makes you feel any better, I get bigotted slurs thrown at me from time to time from all races. So, I know racism when I see it, and despite what the “idiot blacks” call you, I don’t think you’re racist.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:44 am #

Oh. (definition taken from http://www.nolo.com) “Covenants, conditions & restrictions (CC&Rs)
The restrictions governing the use of real estate, usually enforced by a homeowners’ association and passed on to the new owners of property. For example, CC&Rs may tell you how big your house can be, how you must landscape your yard or whether you can have pets. If property is subject to CC&Rs, buyers must be notified before the sale takes place.”
There are CC&Rs on pretty much any property sold, restrictions tend to be far more excessive for condos and in gated type communities, where for instance, they may require that your cars be parked only in your garage (hello Gold River) or may disallow the parking of any commercial vehicle whatsoever (hi gated Elk Grove). In older neighborhoods the restrictions tend to be fewer and sometimes obsolete e.g. racial restrictions. I hope that helps.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:54 am #

You mean, CC&R doesn’t stand for Creedence Clearwater Revival?! I was hoping they’d do a “ban the Church” benefit for those Franklin folks.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:54 am #

i am just the typo master. Olaf, i think you misspelled “illegal” in the phrase “obsolete e.g. racial restrictions.”

http://sacrag.com/blog/archives/articles/001671.html
http://sacrag.com/blog/archives/articles/001680.html#c13646

posted 9/14/05 at 11:58 am #

Huh CoolDMZ? Did you not read the earlier post that I was addressing in my second post? Are you actually the very same person who posted the Squirty Tip comment to stir up some anger? First I said it is illegal and secondarily I said it is obsolete. Thus, illegal AND obsolete–no longer in use! CC&Rs are not typically rewritten on existing plots of subdivided land until said property is once again subdivided. Portions of those CC&Rs are simply disregarded. I am beginning to think you are a race baiter yourself. I will be very, very, very careful with any future references to you so that I don’t accidentally offend your sensibilities when trying to be helpful.

posted 9/14/05 at 12:20 pm #

Olaf: I happen to have a ready-made list of topics to avoid for people who want to avoid offending my sensibilities:

1. that Grover and Gonzo are the same type of being. They are *clearly not* of the same species.
2. that Ford’s is the best hamburger joint in Sacto. For $12 I’ll take a cheap steak at Denny’s.
3. that the Angels fan who hit Reggie Sanders with a plastic bat during the ‘02 World Series should not be on death row.

posted 9/14/05 at 12:35 pm #

1) Mr. Tip and Mr. DMZ are not one and the same. Mr. Tip wouldn’t mind going by “CoolDMT”.

2) In response to:

“Franklin’s residents submitted the list of CC&Rs, that included Clause 1. If it was like Clause 56.4b, I could see how they missed to exclude it. But it was the first one on the page. You don’t leave an obvious clause like that in a submission by accident.”

You don’t get to select the CCRs to submit. You submit em as they are written, and argue the appropriate ones. Order makes no difference (we wouldn’t be hearing this story if the race one was #56?). But you gotta submit em all.

3) Burgers: I’m going with a tie between Willys Burgers off Broadway & 15th-ish and Tahoe Drive Thru on 14th Ave & 60th=ish for number one. Fords as #2. Grover & Gonzo taste about the same- close enought that I belive that they are of the same phylum.

posted 9/14/05 at 1:27 pm #

Sorry to tell you but the best burger is at Bandera with a close second at the Squeeze Inn.

posted 9/14/05 at 2:01 pm #

“You don’t get to select the CCRs to submit. You submit em as they are written, and argue the appropriate ones. Order makes no difference (we wouldn’t be hearing this story if the race one was #56?). But you gotta submit em all.”

I agree, order does not make a difference. My point was that this clause was clear as day, and yet they still submitted the document. When you submit a document which, as its first clause, takes the Ku Klux Klan approach to neighborhood development, I think you deserve every ounce of fire that comes your way, whether you believe in it or not.

I simply find it hard to believe that someone in Franklin decided that this document, with its explicitly racist overtones, was an appropriate submission to any regulating body, and that Clause 1 will simply be overlooked.

posted 9/14/05 at 2:44 pm #

and if that fire is some anonymous jackass on a blog saying “Class move!” then that’s the price you pay for trying to rid your neighborhood of the Jesus folk.

posted 9/14/05 at 2:48 pm #

Yeah- that clause should have been overlooked. Like the Constitution of the United States: each slave is 3/5 of a person- remember Civics?

You are dealing with legal/historical documents. You can’t just “white out” [*insert pun here*] the section that offends you. You would scrap the entire document because it had “racist overtones” and not submit it? So you want to burn the constitution of the United States? You’d scrap that document like an old used tissue? Hey- I got no problem being called a racist, but when you want to BURN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES I gotta REAL problem with that. You constitutionalist!

Hmm. Somehow that just doesn’t sound as good as calling someone a racist. I guess I’m not as immune to the faux social pressures of political correctness as I thought. Maybe if the constitution was scratched into the mud with sticks by a couple of… WHOA WHOA WHOA- YOU just STOP what you were thinking right there. Racist. I rest my case.

posted 9/14/05 at 2:58 pm #

“I rest my case.”

Good, because your case is overworked with no backpay.

posted 9/14/05 at 3:03 pm #

With little to add to the actual discussion here, I second Willie’s as the best pile of ground-up cow in town.

posted 9/14/05 at 3:30 pm #

Actually our constitution was modeled after the Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Confederacy…the only living example of a successful democratic confederation. Just an FYI

posted 9/14/05 at 9:32 pm #

Of course, the first clause in the law of the Iroquois was:
1. Absolutely no dirty Inuits.

posted 9/14/05 at 11:47 pm #

It is possible to get those old racist restrictions removed from your CC&Rs. I think you have to go to the county recorder and make a request. Really, they should not still be there, whether or not they are unenforceable — having to sign onto that crap when you buy a house has got to be a fairly shitty experience for anyone buying a house from which they would have been excluded under the original terms.

(My house is pre-1925 and does not have them, though. In fact the first owner of my house was African-American. It is mostly houses from slightly later developments — around World War II — that have the awful CC&Rs.)

posted 9/15/05 at 3:24 pm #

The Bee actually did an article on this exact same subject of CC&R’s about a year ago. It turns out that due to county regulations, to amend your CC&R’s you have to “refile” every page of the form costing thousands of dollars and requiring the signatures of people dead and alive, authorizations from elected officials and a stamp from the Pullman Railroad car office of the exchequer. Basically, due to county bureaucracy, it is nearly impossible, not to mention ridicuously expensive, to get these old documents changed to the less bigoted standards of our age. I guess it comes down to an issue of “choosing yoru battles.” Probably better to spend our efforts fighting inequities of today rather than worring about the reminders of inequities past.

posted 9/15/05 at 3:50 pm #

You must not have read the follow-up article. In response to that article, Assemblyman Roger Niello pushed through a law that makes it easier to change those covenants. It’s free in Sacramento. (And it was only $50 before, not thousands of dollars.)

Actually it looks like it went to the governor on September 8, so it has not yet been signed and probably wouldn’t go into effect until January. Here’s the Bee article:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/homes/re_news/story/13553680p-14394400c.html

posted 9/16/05 at 6:53 am #