City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Although Homeowners’ Associations have been overlooked by historians and sociologists, Davis considers them the “‘trade unions’ of an important section of the middle class” (160) who have used them to slow down urban growth that threatens to disrupt the nature of their communities. Historically, these white-dominated associations have used their power to exclude Blacks and Asians from wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods; until a 1948 Supreme Court Law forbade such interference, white homeowners could easily rally together to control the ethnic makeup of their neighborhoods.

Even after the 1948 law, realtors and developers were able to collaborate in favor of suburban racial segregation. As late as the 1970s, middle-class families wanted to “reestablish the suburban Eden of the early 1950s, with low taxes and ‘neighborhood’ (read: white) schools” (185). This was achieved by the “separate incorporation” of suburban communities, such as Lakewood, just north of Long Beach, where its founders “hired consultants to explore options for incorporation without the traditional cost of creating city government out of the whole cloth” (165). They were thus able to avoid consolidating with the metropolis, as such suburban communities were able to “reclaim control over zoning and land use without the burden of public expenditures proportionate to those of older cities” (166).