The pre-monetary systems of bartering (among strangers), gifting, and debt date back to the earliest societies, with monetary systems based on specific goods (such as livestock) developing as early as 9,000 BCE. By 6,000 BCE Mesopotamian tribes would gather in small communities to exchange goods and services using these goods-based monetary exchanges in a system of bartering between tribes. These exchanges heavily relied upon proximity and contributed to the formation of early communities of diversified production. Throughout the next several millennia, cultures would continue to use specific materials as forms of currency, to include clay tokens that might symbolize exchanges and trades. As the production of goods and need for more commerce intensified, record keeping became more commonplace. As communities grew and expanded the horizons of trade, rulers began to impose taxes and accounting and consistency between goods-based monetary systems was increasingly difficult to keep track of.

Slowly currency moved toward coin-based systems of representation. The oldest known state-minted coin was that of the gold and silver Lydian stater in 600 BCE; many civilizations began developing standardized currencies over the next several centuries. This system lessened the significance of proximity and sped up the methods of trade. During the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 CE) China developed the first paper currency in response to inflation, linking the physical paper to the value of goods, a system that was adopted in the 17th century CE in European countries, enabling a rapid expansion of global trade.

The inaugural Fiesta de los angeles, 1894

Los Angeles experienced its first few major population booms in the early 20^th century, brought about by oil and real estate booms, and aided by the establishment of a new national rail hub that made it cheap to travel to the city. As migrants flocked to the west coast, new industries began to take hold in the county that would direct the future growth of the region in a very specific manner. Industries such as oil, rubber, car and aircraft manufacturing and entertainment all required adequate amounts of space in order for their operations be conducted. Thus, the factories and hubs dispersed all throughout the region, with residential and commercial development occurring around them. This kind of dispersed growth would not have been possible, nor prevalent, if not for two vital technologies of the time: the electric streetcar and the personal automobile. By the 1920s, 1,100 miles of track had been laid throughout region, and Angelenos were four times more likely to own a car than other Americans. Hence, the stage was set for Los Angeles to become the archetypal example of suburban growth and sprawl.

Along with access to jobs, future residents were also being lured to California by another sales pitch. “Boosters” were selling the California, or rather the American dream, promising a pleasant climate, planned and secure neighborhoods, access to schools, parks, shopping centers and highways, all packaged with the home of your dreams. As migrants were drawn to the region in droves, home builders were able to meet the constant demand, as they had begun to master the mass production of housing on a scale that had never been seen before. In the city of Lakewood, for example, 50 homes were being finished every day, roughly one home every 10 minutes. These new homes and developments were built in uniform fashion in order to take advantage of economies of scale. And thus non-stop building ensued, first filling in the gaps left in the city’s urban fabric, and then expanding out onto the city’s fringes once there was no space left.

Throughout the decades, a number of different industries would move into the city and leave their mark on its growth. The 1950s and 1960s saw an influx of the defense industry to the golden state, as the nation responded to the growing crisis of the Cold War. In the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles experienced an influx of international immigration and an influx of foreign capital as the city reoriented itself as a global port and financial hub. In the 1980s and 1990s, the newly emerging high tech and computer industries brought multitudes of new residents to LA county. This brings us to today, where enormous fulfilment centers for organizations like Amazon, Walmart, and UPS are being built at the region’s edges, spurring ever more development around them.

Although Los Angeles often grew in response to industrial and market expansion within the city, there were a number of other factors that contributed as well. First, for veterans returning from World Wars I and II seeking safety, stability and a pleasant lifestyle in the wake of such traumatic events, California’s housing market offered them this. Next, as the Cold War begins to unfold, politicians and planners begin to think of urban planning in the context of national defense and begin to encourage the dispersal of populations as a protection against nuclear war. At the same time as the nation was experiencing war and the perceived threat of the expansion of communism, neoliberal ideology surfaces as a popular counter philosophy and begins to permeate the world in the late 1940s. Promoting ideas such as market freedom and privatization, consumer culture becomes a main driver of American capitalism, and the commodification of housing really begins to take shape. Along with these ideas, neoliberal thought rejuvenated one more belief, that which had driven Americans west in the first place, and applied it to every aspect of development: the belief in the pursuit of constant growth, growth without limits. Whether it be growth of personal wealth, national GDP or suburban expansion, the belief that growth is the ultimate goal became one of the most pervasive ideas of neoliberalism and helped guide Los Angeles to what it is today.

The funding mechanisms for social housing have greatly impacted its creation and form throughout the past several decades. The earliest public housing projects built in the early-mid 20th century were funded entirely by the federal and local government. They incorporated modernist design principles into housing projects that strictly aimed to provide quality homes with basic services to lower-income groups who had been living in substandard housing in inner-cities. They represented a perspective that the government had an obligation to provide people with adequate shelter. However, they also served an ulterior purpose: to demolish “blighted” areas of cities, which in most cases meant neighborhoods inhabited by racial minorities. These projects were built exclusively in low-income communities and were generally inhabited only by those experiencing poverty - typically those excluded from mainstrean economic systems of support due to legal forms of discrimination. In Los Angeles, nearly all of the 14 city-owned affordable housing complexes were built in the 1940s and 1950s.

More recently, modern incarnations of social housing are built by private real-estate developers fulfilling inclusionary zoning requirements when federal subsidies can ensure a margin of profit for the development of affordable housing, or private, non-profit organizations and community development corporations. Modern public housing is commonly built alongside market-rate units in a fashion which mixes various income groups together in one building based on minimum percentages. It often incorporates mixed-uses as well, and tends to be located in a wider range of neighborhoods, not strictly low-income and minority areas. In order to build market-rate housing, developers must include a certain number of subsidized units. In 2019, for instance, the city began necessitating maximum affordable unit inclusion on projects proposed for city-owned land, meaning that developers bid against each other not strictly through monetary means, but rather by the extent to which their proposed projects are affordable.

Many units developed this way, however, are only required to be affordable for a limited period of time and for different income levels, which threatens the future supply of social housing. This method of procurement for moderately social housing ultimately demonstrates the neoliberal appropriation of a service which was once considered a public good by market forces, ensuring that affordable housing is as much a commodity as market rate housing.