Hoovervilles:
One of the main causes of the Great Depression was the Stock Market crash. The President at the time of the Stock Market crash was Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover believed strongly in the lassiez-faire approach to governing the United States, which means he believed the Federal Government should stay out of business as much as possible. This did not help with the Great Depression. Once people began to lose money and were forced to foreclose on their homes, people started villages of small shacks in city parks or wherever they had room. The people living in these shacks were bitter about losing all of their money and President Hoover doing nothing about it, so the people named these villages Hoovervilles.
The small shacks were built out of wood, scrap metal, cardboard, or anything else they could find. Some lucky families could build their shacks out of stone and bricks. But some unlucky families didn't ahve buildings at all; they dug holes in the ground with tin or cardboard roofs to protect them from the weather. Some homeless people found homes in other areas such as empty buildings and water mains.
The largest Hoovervilles was located in New York City's Central Park. There were several attempts to get rid of Hoovervilles, but the government couldn't control the mess of health issues that were associated with the Hoovervilles. After Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected into office, he created the New Deal. The New Deal created many programs that were supposed to create jobs and help with the homelessness. Unfortunately, there were still many many people left in the shanty towns.
Some of the large Hoovervilles even had their own mayor, cleaning committees, and other organizational groups. But by 1941, a program was created that tore down all shanty towns. By that time unemployment had gone down and people were able to find homes again.
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