In February of 1938, George Farley shot and killed two Los Angeles deputies while resisting an eviction over what the Los Angeles Times claimed was delinquent rent of $69. Rallying to Farley’s defense, the California Eagle, the newspaper of record for Black Los Angeles, revealed that Farley once owned his home but fell victim to tax foreclosure for an unpaid “street bond.” In this talk, I uncover the now forgotten history of the predatory debt market that leveraged the right to evict George Farley, and thousands of others, to finance the modernization of Los Angeles. I end with a discussion about the implications of this case study on contemporary discussions of housing policy.

Marques Vestal is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Critical Black Urbanism. He serves as a Faculty Advisor for Million Dollar Hoods, a community-driven and multidisciplinary initiative documenting the human and fiscal costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. He also serves as a historical consultant for the Luskin Center for History and Policy. Marques is a tenant of Los Angeles and a member of the South Central local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Marques is an urban historian studying the social history of residential property in Black Los Angeles during the rebellious twentieth century. His work links property conflict—the everyday contracts, solicitations, complaints, lawsuits, and murders over property—to broader transformations of real estate, urban development, and Black liberation. He argues that this space of incessant conflict is the unwritten housing policy of the United States. Marques’ research interests are broad, but center on the twentieth-century experience of a few key political relations to land: property, housing insecurity, municipal incapacity, and racial capitalism. Having witnessed, archivally and firsthand, the violence of Los Angeles’ rental housing markets, he is dedicated to projects that advance social housing and horizontal tenant governance.