OKC’s Plat Amendment Project Moves Forward

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma City Council adopted a resolution on Tuesday to remove discriminatory language from 13 plats in OKC.
The plats are located in portions of the following neighborhoods:
Crown Heights
Lincoln Terrace
Bath Second East View
Edgemere Park
This is the first of many similar resolutions the City Council is expected to consider over the next few years. Oklahoma City has more than 6,000 plats, all of which require manual review.
Plats are detailed documents and maps that show how land is subdivided into parcels, how streets and alleys are arranged, and what restrictions or covenants govern development.
The original plat documents will not be edited or altered as part of the resolution. When residents download their plat, a digital scan with the redaction will be visible, along with the original document. All property owners who live in these plats were notified about the process.
About the plat amendment project
Historically, plats often contained restrictions that would prohibit Black, Asian, Jewish, and other marginalized groups from buying or occupying properties within the subdivision. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948 ruled that courts could no longer enforce these restrictions, and in 1968 the Fair Housing Act fully outlawed them. Despite these changes to the laws, many plat documents still contain these historical restrictions today.
The Plat Amendment Project is an effort to identify and flag discriminatory language — such as historic racial covenants — embedded in local land records. While these clauses are no longer legally enforceable, updating the public record ensures it is accurate and reflects the city’s values.
Updating the plats matters because it corrects the formal land records to align with current law and removes language that was originally intended to exclude people from owning or occupying property. Having this outdated language still in recorded documents can be confusing and unsettling to people who encounter it, and at odds with how property ownership is actually treated under the law. Addressing this language makes the public record accurate and up to date.
“When discriminatory language remains in official plat records, it continues to harm the communities it initially targeted,” Human Rights Commission’s Compliance Officer Emma Winiski said. “Amending these documents is both a statement that Oklahoma City’s records should reflect who we are today and a step toward ensuring they are consistent with current state and federal law.”
Seventy‑five people attended the Oklahoma City Human Rights Commission’s hands‑on Plat Amendment Project event at the Downtown Library on March 28.
During the two‑hour session, volunteers reviewed more than 2,000 plats across Oklahoma City’s 621 square miles. That accounts for about 20% of all plats within city limits. Of those, about 9% contained discriminatory language.
The Plat Amendment Project is moving forward in partnership with OU’s Institute for Quality Communities and Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, with help from graduate student William Willson, who is earning a dual master’s degree in city and regional planning and public health.
Why not use AI?
Some residents have asked why the city is not using artificial intelligence for this work, but the process is more complex than it appears. Plat documents are stored in several counties, and the city would need to collect and convert them into readable text before AI could analyze them. The city would also need to build and train a custom AI model and still rely on staff to review anything the system flags. Setting up that process would require significant time, funding and technical resources. For a project of this size, human reviewers remain the most efficient and reliable option.
Learn more about the project at vision.okc.gov/oklahoma-city-plat.