Hoo•ver•ville - n.
A crudely built camp put up usually on the edge of a town to house the dispossessed and destitute during the depression of the 1930s.
- Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition.
There was a place where homeless men, women and children lived during the Great Depression. Unless you were lucky enough to have a relative that still had a house, you lived in a neighborhood called a Hooverville. Inside these Hoovervilles, there were hundreds and thousands of little shacks made up of scrap metal or anything people could find such as wood and cardboard. They had no electricity, heat or water, and barley any clothes, meaning the winter days were very cold and many people got sick eventually leading to death. These shacks were built right next to big cities and factories of where the majority of these people used to work, most men would leave their families behind and travel across country just in search of any job available. During the 1930's, even trying to get rid of Hoovervilles was difficult mainly because families had nowhere else to call home and the shacks would leave a scattered mess of scrap medal and cardboard everywhere. The reason these "homes" were in neighborhoods called Hoovervilles was for the honor of President Herbert Hoover, blaming him for the little amount of government help and the economy crashing.