As a child in the 1960s I once rode a trolleybus in Seattle with my grandmother, and when it rounded a corner looking out over industrial land south of the train station and west toward container ships on Elliott Bay, she said, “That’s where the Hooverville was.” Close to a thousand unemployed men had camped there for a decade during the Depression, in improvised shacks and lean-tos built from scrap, boiling clothes in barrels and cooking food in blackened cans over open fires. Women facing homelessness were forced to move in with relatives or squat in doorways. Housing density in Seattle skyrocketed. Burned down twice by police, the Hooverville was rebuilt both times.
Source : No Haven
