Hoovervilles

Cultural  

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.

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Example Sentences

Thirty years later, a prominent shack town, one of a few Hoovervilles, held up to 1,500 people south of what is now Pioneer Square next to the town’s main garbage dump.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 8, 2022

Homeless people built shantytowns called Hoovervilles on unused land, the name intended to mock then-President Hoover’s handling of the economic crisis.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 16, 2021

The unemployed and the hungry throughout the country squatted in vacant homes and on vacant land forming shantytowns that were known as Hoovervilles.

From Salon • May 4, 2021

This was when the United States was suffering the worst throes of the Depression, with unemployment cresting at twenty-five per cent and Hoovervilles springing up across the country.

From The New Yorker • Dec. 12, 2018

A lot of squatter towns, Hoovervilles, was built on the tracks, I guess ’cause people got around by hopping the rails.

From "Life Is So Good" by George Dawson