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Hooverville:  A crudely built camp put up usually on the edge of a town to house the many poverty stricken people who had lost their homes during the Depression of the 1930s.

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Many of the shantytowns that sprung up all over the nation during the Depression were facetiously called Hoovervilles because so many people at the time blamed President Herbert Hoover for letting the nation slide into the Great Depression. Coined by Charles Michelson, the Publicity Chief of the Democratic National Committee, it was first used in print media in 1930 when The New York Times published an article about a shantytown in Chicago, Illinois. The term caught on quickly and was soon used throughout the country.

Though homelessness has been a problem throughout the ages and was a common sight in the 1920’s, as hobos and tramps lounged in city streets and rode the rails, it has never been more present in the United States as it was during the Great Depression.

Squatter's shacks in "Hooverville," Portland, Oregon, Arthur

 Rothstein, 1936. Hooverville was the popular name  for shanty

 towns built by homeless people during the  Depression. They took

 their name for President Herbert Hoover, who  the American

 people blamed for the Depression.

This image available for photographic prints  and downloads HERE!

The causes of the Great Depression were many and varied, beginning with rapid economic growth and financial excess of the "Roaring Twenties.” During this time, many Americans were quickly buying automobiles, appliances, and speculating in the stock market. Unfortunately, much of this wild spending was done on credit and while businesses were making huge gains, the average workers’ wages were not increasing at anywhere near the same rate.

But, like other "booms” throughout history, the cycle soon led to a "bust.” As manufacturing output continued and farmers were over producing, circumstances began to change, leading to falling prices and rising debt. At the same time, there was a major banking crisis, serious policy mistakes of the Federal Reserve Board, and with the stock market crash in October, 1929 the country was thrown into a full-blown Depression that would affect the nation for nearly a decade.

Businesses began to lay off people, which was quickly followed by homelessness as the economy crumbled in the early 1930’s. Homeowners lost their property when they could not pay mortgages or pay taxes. Renters fell behind and faced eviction. Many squeezed in with relatives, but hundreds of thousands were not so fortunate. Some defied eviction, staying where they were, others found refuge in one of the increasing number of vacant buildings, more found shelter under bridges, in culverts, empty water mains, or on vacant public lands, where they built crude shacks. When the Dust Bowl began in 1931 it made matters even worse. By 1932 millions of Americans were living outside the “normal” housing market. Between 1929 and 1933, more than 100,000 businesses failed across the nation and when President Hoover left office in 1933, the national unemployment rate was nearly 25%.

As these many people used whatever means they had at their disposal for survival, they blamed Hoover for the downfall of economic stability and lack of government help. Making matters worse, the minimal federal help that was provided often didn’t go to the sick, hungry and homeless, as many state and local politicians of the time, were corrupt.

These teeming communities of makeshift shacks known as “Hoovervilles,” were often concentrated in cities close to soup kitchens run by charities. The shelters themselves varied widely, from stone houses and fairly solid structures built by those with construction skills, but, far more that were thrown together with wood crates, cardboard, tar paper, scraps of cloth and metal, and various other discarded materials. Within their shelters, most people had a small stove, a few cooking implements, some bedding, and little else.