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With today's homelessness rates increasing due to the developing recession and new counts being taken; maybe we should look back to the Great Depression when homelessness was a way of life to many. The term "homelessness" refers to a specific condition where people lack housing due to lack of finances for one reason or another. Those who find housing in a temporary shelter or any temporary institution are also considered homeless with an estimation of 100 million people in the world considered homeless. Anyone who is chronically homeless is one who has been continuously homeless for over a year, or four episodes of homelessness in three consecutive years.    

Prior to the Great Depression, Americans bought automobiles and household appliances while playing the stock market—similar to today—with the majority purchased on credit. Unfortunately, even though business had grown 65 percent, the wages of the average work had only grown 8 percent. This huge gap between the rich and poor eventually crashed on October 29, 1929 when the Stock Market crashed, triggering the worst economic collapse in the modern industrial world. Not only involving the United States, it also affected the rest of the world from 1929 to the early 1940s.  

When the workforce lost their jobs, it affected more than 15 million Americans with banks failing and businesses closing down. No relief was given to the poverty-affected people as President Hoover felt it as a passing event, even though the majority of people lost their homes due to non-payment of mortgages. Instead, he processed a small trickling of economic programs to help the banks and businesses, with higher-up executives who chose to lay off employees instead of offering help.  

Shantytowns of homeless people sprang up called "Hoovervilles" due to this extreme unpopularity.  Once Franklin Roosevelt was elected, he strongly attacked the depression through the Emergency Banking Relief Act, with his first 100 days in office dedicated to rescuing the country through a liberal political alliance of labor unions; blacks and minorities; farmers; intellectuals; and government relief. Many minorities switched to the Democratic Party during this time.  

Similar to the homeless camps we see in the larger cities today, Hooverville consisted of a very crudely built camps. These camps were put up by homeless individuals on the edge of town during the 1930s, consisting of the destitute and dispossessed who were involved in the Great Depression.  

Any money that was to filter down to assist this group of people never made it to them, similar to the banking bailout of today, due to the corruptness of the government, businesses, and city officials. Many of these "squatters' shacks" were rickety structures that were developed almost overnight by the disillusioned poor. Anything from packing boxes to housing built of bits of tin, cardboard, and tar papers formed this new housing district. Others were forced to find shelter in existing water mains. Over time, the rising unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and delinquent taxes forced over 13 million people to become transients or survive in Hooverville camps.