Growth of Squatter Settlements and Slums

Slums in Hooverville, Seattle, during the Great Depression (1933)

During the Great Depression from 1929 to the late 1930s, harsh economic conditions led to escalating unemployment rates as high as twenty-five percent and bank failures coupled with increasing foreclosures of home mortgages led to the eviction of millions of people from their homes, succumbing to poverty and homelessness. (Chudaccoff, 203) This caused a rise in squatter settlements and slums as people moved there as a last resort. The homeless and jobless built and expanded the slums and squatter settlements in city outskirts which instigated an urgent response by the government and private enterprises to address this issue to reduce the costs of slum maintenance and prevent the further decrease in property values by implementing housing policies which seeked to replace these areas with low-cost housing. However, these projects did not prove very effective as most of the working-class and poor still could not afford to pay for these new housing with their measly incomes. For example, the financial aid PWA Housing Division provided for the construction of twenty-two thousand housing units in different states (1933) failed to help families who could not afford the twenty-six dollars rent. (Chudacoff 204)