Housing Reparations: Designing Programs for Reparative Justice

This article develops a framework for evaluating and designing housing reparations toward transformative justice. While municipal initiatives and lending programs seek to redress racialized exclusion, they reveal tensions between redistributing access and reimagining housing justice. Drawing on theories of reparative and housing justice, I argue that housing reparations must engage both wealth redistribution and recognition of historical exclusions and prioritize secure tenure enabling social citizenship. A case analysis of Washington’s Covenant Homeownership Program demonstrates both promise and constraint. The program identified over 50,000 racially restrictive covenants in Washington, and links these exclusions to persistent racial homeownership gaps. By grounding downpayment assistance in evidence of historical and ongoing disadvantage, it offers a tailored remedy that strengthens defensibility under strict scrutiny. But its selective inclusion of certain Asian groups illustrates the difficulty of balancing redistribution and recognition, while reliance on private property highlights the limits of wealth-building through ownership. I argue that reparative lending programs are legitimate housing reparations that redistribute homeownership access long denied to communities of color; yet housing reparations must also stretch beyond homeownership programs toward a rights-based approach addressing the roots of housing injustices.