Having no choices

A jobseeker adopts the same strategy in New York during the Great Depression

A shanty town within Central Park, New York. The huts were designed with the idea that they'd been built out of everyday objects


After the stock market crash of October 1929 in New York, million people lost their jobs. Jobseekers started to stand on street with a cardboard which depicts the basic information of them. However, the unemployment rate was increasing and those jobseekers could not still afford their renting and housing. As a result, they used some trash to build huts and settled the huts to form a town, called “Hooverville” because they believed President Hoover’s policies lead the nation into depression.

One thought on “Having no choices

  1. This topic should be on the exam because it shows one of the biggest changes of people’s lives as a result of the Great Depression. Not only were people losing their jobs, but they were also losing their homes, forcing them to rummage through the streets. Eventually, many of them formed towns of little garbage huts also known as shanty towns.

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