Hoovervilles

1. The encampments of the poor and homeless that sprang up during the Great Depression. They were named with ironic intent after President Herbert Hoover, who was in office when the depression started.

Example Sentences

Homeless men and women gather around beds set beside a road amid the ordered destruction of “Hoovervilles” in the early 1940s in the Greater Los Angeles area.

From Los Angeles Times

County sheriff’s deputies burned down the tin-roofed shanties that housed more than 100 hobos along the banks of the Los Angeles River and the Rio Hondo Wash. Three years later, the city of Los Angeles ordered any remaining Hoovervilles destroyed.

From Los Angeles Times

As the Depression tightened its grip on the nation in 1931 and amid soaring unemployment and the spread of shantytowns of dispossessed Americans known as “Hoovervilles,” veterans began to gather in Washington, uncorking fears of civil disorder.

From Los Angeles Times

In some parts of our city, we aren’t too far from looking like the Hoovervilles of the 1930s.

From Seattle Times

But in addition to those big details, Deverell said he and the other historians also focused on granular ones about what life in Los Angeles looked like at the time, as many of its residents were relegated to Hoovervilles as a result of the city’s changing economy.

From Seattle Times