In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, nearly an hour from the closest city, a small group of homesteaders is building an exclusive community from scratch.
Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives.
The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.
“Seeing someone who doesn’t present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,” said one founder, Eric Orwoll, who moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube but is now focused on developing 160 acres in Ravenden, Ark., into a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land.
{snip} In creating their community, the founders of Return to the Land are testing anti-discrimination housing laws that have been in place for 57 years.
The community’s other founder, Peter Csere, was arrested in Ecuador for stabbing a miner and is accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. Both he and Mr. Orwoll say they believe Return to the Land meets the requirements for a legal exemption for private associations and religious groups that offer housing to their members.
Tim Griffin, the Arkansas attorney general, opened an investigation into potential legal violations by Return to the Land after reports on the community were published earlier in the summer in The Forward and on Sky News. Jeff LeMaster, his communications director, said in a statement, “We’re continuing our review of this matter.”
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To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land. But John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1866.
“You’ve got a smoking gun case of intentional discrimination,” he said. “I think they’re misguided when they say that they’re home free.”
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“Return to the Land needs to strike while the iron is hot,” Mr. Orwoll wrote on a fund-raising page for the group, which has raised nearly $90,000.
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The timing, both Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere said, is right. “I would rather the precedent is set and the discussion is had while there’s a relatively favorable cultural and legal climate for it,” said Mr. Orwoll, 35. “So if we’re going to fight this battle — and it’s a battle that’s going to be fought at some point — it better be now.”
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Return to the Land is the name of both the 160-acre compound, which has about 40 residents, and a private association that Mr. Orwoll said “hundreds” have joined, paying a one-time $25 membership fee and earning acceptance after sharing information online about their ethnic background.
Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere, along with three other men, run a limited liability company founded in September 2023. Nearly two weeks later, they bought the land in Ravenden for $237,000, property records show. Members of the association can buy shares currently valued around $6,600 each in the L.L.C. In exchange for each share, they each receive three acres in the compound.
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Mr. Csere designed the structure of Return to the Land. He and Mr. Orwoll believe the structure is legal because a line in the Fair Housing Act allows an exemption for private associations and religious groups to give preference to their own members when offering housing. It’s a rule, legal experts say, designed to allow groups like churches to offer a house for clergy on their property.
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But Mr. Orwoll and Mr. Csere believe the rule they’ve homed in on from the Fair Housing Act gives them grounds to restrict membership to those, as they put it, with strict European heritage. They’ve rejected applicants that they believed did not appear to be white enough.
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