Homelessness In The Great Depression

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The 20s had been a thrilling decade in America with new creations, technical inventions, and changing customs and cultures. The luxurious lifestyle and invulnerable businesses vanished almost overnight triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash and economic collapse in the United States. The Great Depression was the deepest and one of the most abiding economic decline in the history of the Western modern and industrialized world. In the Uncle Sam, this agonizing event began all at once after the stock market crash on the October of 1929, and sent Wall Street into an alarm and wiped out millions of shareholders (Great Depression). Over the following years, consumer spending and investments dropped, causing abrupt deterioration in industrial production…show more content…
Alchin reported that “In 1932 alone, 273,000 families were evicted from their homes .” These evictions happened because citizens were not able to repay the rents and taxes they owed to the government, bank, or other agents. Some families were able to move in with their relatives, but most of the evicted faced immediate homelessness. This matter contributed to the people living in a filthy condition with minimum hygiene and nutrition. The homeless referred to the places they lived in as Shantytowns, nicknamed “Hoovervilles”. The nickname was taken from the name of the president of that time, President Herbert Hoover (Alchin). Garcia explained in “The Human Impact of the Great Depression” that this was so because the homeless blamed the crisis on Hoover . The Hoovervilles townies had to encounter shabby conditions in shacks that provided almost no shelter at all. This community of homeless people even established their own “mayor” as a leader to constitute norms and settle any disagreements (Alchin). In the midst of homelessness, health and nutrition were never a priority to the

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