Racial covenants on tens of thousands of Western New York homes prohibited people of color from living in wide swaths of our community. Redlining, used by lenders and promoted by our government, further tightened boundaries on where people of color could live and denied access to home ownership. These housing policies and practices segregated our communities, shaped how communities of color are policed, and directly contributed to the racial disparities in home ownership, household wealth, health outcomes, and access to education which plague our community to this day.