Sun Oct 20 22:20:00 UTC 2024: – A California law mandates the removal of racially restrictive language from property deeds, which has been unenforceable since 1948.
– Dan Ho, a Stanford law professor, highlighted the issue of racial covenants still present in deed records, emphasizing their discriminatory nature.
– California’s 2021 law requires counties to identify and redact these covenants, posing significant logistical challenges due to the volume of documents—Santa Clara County alone has 24 million deed documents.
– Some counties contracted commercial vendors for this task, while others utilized citizen volunteers.
– The County of Santa Clara partnered with Stanford University’s Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) to employ AI and large language models to expedite the process.
– The AI model developed by the team can effectively detect racial covenants, potentially saving 86,500 person-hours and being cost-effective.
– The project also involved geolocating historical maps to track properties associated with restrictive covenants, providing insights into the historical patterns of housing discrimination.
– The collaboration is seen as a successful example of academic and governmental partnership in addressing legislative mandates for social equity.
– More information on the project can be found in a paper available at the RegLab website.

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