Santa Clara County Uses AI to Redact Racial Covenants from 5 Million Deed Records Under California's Anti-Discrimination Law

Oct 17, 2024, 05:29 PM

Santa Clara County is undertaking a significant initiative to locate and redact racial covenants from its extensive collection of property deeds, which includes 84 million pages of records dating back to 1850. This effort is in response to a mandate for California counties to eliminate discriminatory language that historically barred non-White individuals from home ownership. In collaboration with Stanford University's RegLab and Princeton, the county aims to utilize artificial intelligence to efficiently identify and map these covenants from over five million deed records. The project seeks to enhance compliance with California's anti-discrimination laws and is expected to streamline a process that traditionally takes years and incurs substantial costs.