Research Guides: Housing Inequities: Housing Inequity in Stanislaus County

Use the Rigiht Search Terms

Having a research strategy (knowing what information you want to find) and using useful keywords to search will help you find the information you need.

Here are some useful keywords for finding information about housing discrimination:

housing discrimination
race discrimination
restrictive covenants
zoning and race discrimination
racial zoning
redlining
reverse redlining
white flight
mortgage discrimination
Federal Fair Housing Act
Community Reinvestment Act of 1977
Rumford Housing Act (a.k.a. CA Fair Housing law)
secondary mortgage market
mortgages

In addition, you can combine keywords or add a geographic location to the end of your keyword to further focus your search. For example, I could search for restrictive covenants and modesto.

Selected Articles @MJC

If you are away from campus or using Wifi on campus, you will need to sign in to these articles just like you sign in to your student email.

Modesto Seeks Housing in Underused Commercial Areas Modesto Bee article written by John Holland and published on November 10, 2023.
Modesto JC Students Research History of Housing Segregation Modesto Bee article by John Holland dated October 29, 2023.
Modestans Shine Light on Area's Racially Restrictive Housing Policies of the Past Article by Garth Stapley of The Modesto Bee.
Blacks Were Kept Our of Nice Modesto Neighborhoods by Plan Article by Garth Stapley from The Modesto Bee.
Atoning for Racist Housing Covenants in Modesto Article in The Modesto Bee found in the Access World News Database.
County to Search Records for Racist Property Covenants Article by Ken Carlson of The Modesto Bee found in Access World News database.
Occupants Must Be White: No Negroes, Mexicans, Hindus, Filipinos' - Opinion Letter to the Editor by Sharon Froba regarding reversing home discrimination. Offers useful brief background.
Communities Are on Frontlines for Climate Justice Article by Alvaro Sanchez and Olatunji Oboi Reed of The Modesto Bee.
Calif. Issues Anti-Redlining Rules: Seen Softer Than Original Proposal 1979 article published in The American Banker and found in Nexis Uni.

Find More Articles

You can find many more article using the keywords above in the MJC Library Databases. Just click on the image to launch our Articles & Databases page.

California & Local Resources for Historical Research

When you are researching local history, local historical societies are a great resource.

Racially Restrictive Covenants, Modesto, CA Based on the work of David and Sharon Froba, these records show how RRCs were used in Modesto mainly around the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Although these restrictions are not applicable nowadays, their effects continue haunting the deepest fabric of our society.
Map of Modesto City Limits 1947 Showing Racially Restrictive Covenants The web mapping application of Racially Restrictive Covenants in Modesto shows subdivisions containing: Restrictions (red) with racially restrictive covenants, Strongly Suspect with newspaper advertisement as restricted residential zones, Suspect, which due to dates of subdivisions are suspected of had having restrictions. California State University, Stanislaus and CASA, the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis acknowledge the research work and financial support of David and Sharon Froba to make available this project.
Stanislaus County Clerk-Recorder The Clerk-Recorder's office has public property records, such as covenants that you can search.
Calisphere Calisphere is the gateway to California’s remarkable digital collections. Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically-important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
Online Archive of California The Online Archive of California provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California campuses.
California Digital Newspaper Collection The California Digital Newspaper Collection contains over 1,500,000 pages of significant historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California. It also contains issues of several current California newspapers that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers.
California Historical Society The California Historical Society, founded in 1871, is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire and empower people to make California's richly diverse past a meaningful part of their contemporary lives.
CSU Stanislaus - Local History Resources Discover the manuscript collections that are part of the CSU Stanislaus Special Collections & University Archives. Beginning February 14, 2022, their archive will be open by appointment. They have a wonderful local history resource entitled Stanislaus Stepping Stones, which you can use for this assignment. The MJC Library has it also, but CSU, Stanislaus has more issues than we do. To schedule an appointment call, Mary Weppler-Van Diver at (209) 664-6538.
McHenry Museum & Historical Society Located in downtown Modesto, their phone number is: (209) 577-5235. The Historical Society has a wonderful local history publication entitled, Stanislaus Stepping Stones, which our library also has.
Turlock Historical Society Turlock Historical Society Web site. Their phone number is: (209) 668-7386.

Local Housing Organizations

You can use information on these websites for research or contact them to help if you experience difficulties with housing.

Housing Stanislaus Housing Stanislaus is a countywide initiative to develop a common vision for housing in Stanislaus County.
Valley Improvement Projects (VIP) Local organization with a "mission of improving the quality of life of underrepresented and marginalized residents of California’s Central Valley by advocating for social and environmental justice."
Stanislaus Regional Housing Authority Founded in 1949 the Stan Regional Housing Authority was created to help create sanitary and safe housing for low-income residents.
Stanislaus County Planning & Community Development Of special interest are the Community Development and Planning Commission areas of this department website.
Modesto Housing Plan Final draft of the Modesto Housing Plan - July 2022
Stanislaus Equity Partners Stanislaus Equity Partners works to connect neighbors, resources, and opportunities. As a Community Development Corporation, STEP works to empower Stanislaus residents with access to asset building opportunities through housing, small business services and affordable lending.
Community & Economic Development, City of Modesto Their goal is to support economic vitality, and ensure that new development achieves a balance between the economic, social, environmental and quality of life goals for the City of Modesto.
Visionary Home Builders of California Their mission is to create and advocate for healthy, vibrant, safe communities through the development of affordable housing and educational opportunities for families, seniors and individuals of low and moderate income.
Project Sentinel: Modesto Office Project Sentinel is a nonprofit fair housing agency that assists individuals with housing problems such as discrimination, mortgage foreclosure & delinquency, rental issues including repairs, deposits, privacy, dispute resolution, home buyer education, post purchase education and reverse mortgages.