St. Paul Realtor group withdraws as a partner in project to expose racist covenants Objections to the effort to expose racial covenants remain unclear. By Randy Furst, Star Tribune May 3, 2021 — 7:58pm Text size Copy shortlink: One of the metro area's largest Realtors associations has backed out of a project that it helped launch to remove racial covenants written into thousands of property deeds in the early 1900s. Officials with the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors notified Just Deeds organizers this spring that they were withdrawing from the project. "Please remove SPAAR's name, logo and description from the Just Deeds website and other materials created by and for the partnership," Joe McKinley, a vice president for the St. Paul group, wrote Just Deeds organizers in an e-mail.