The New Hoovervilles
By
There are a good many comparisons that one can make between our current economic crisis and the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930’s but while some of them seem to be obvious, such as the chaotic movement of the stock market, others are masked by our current level of technology.
Watching the acceptance speech by Barak Obama in
Hoovervilles, for those who might not be aware of them, were colonies of the unemployed and homeless who congregated around urban centers looking for work. They set up “shantytowns” made of anything they could find: scrap wood, metal, cardboard, etc. Many of them were on the street because their homes and farms were foreclosed. They were mostly populated by unemployed men looking for work while their families tried to find relatives to live with but many women with children populated Hoovervilles as well.
In the article that appeared in the New York Times there was a very interesting quote from the new Mayor that seems very appropriate for today: “Building construction may be at a standstill elsewhere, but down here everything is booming.”
What made all of this so visible and current for me was a speech given earlier in the week by Tim Lister, the Community Outreach Director of “Save the Family Foundation of Arizona.” He was thanking the local Rotary Club for the assistance and support that was being provided while making a plea for continued help.
The organization’s primary focus is to get families with
children off the streets and find housing and help for them while they get back
on their feet. While most of the
families they work with are usually victims of some form of domestic violence,
they have seen a large shift of late due to the large number of foreclosures in
Hoovervilles in today’s crisis take a completely different form. You won’t see a lot of shacks being constructed in vacant lots and city parks because people and families have another option: their car. In a foreclosure today you get to keep your car, unlike in the 1930’s. If you have money for gas you can move about; if not you find a friendly shopping mall to make home until you can move on.
According to “Save the Family,” many of the families they are now helping have been living out of their cars, as it’s the only shelter they have.
I did a bit of research on my own and sure enough you could spot cars in the parking lots of shopping malls, libraries, community centers and just about anywhere there was a lighted, free, parking facility. Once you know what you’re looking for it became pretty obvious.
What makes the situation so different from 75 years ago is the mobility factor. If everyone without shelter were to congregate in the same place for two or three months all sorts of focus would be placed on them but today they are mostly invisible.
One of the chilling quotes that Mr. Lister had was “We’re not just talking about the working poor who are in trouble but there are a lot of middle class families that are only one or two paychecks away from being on the street.”
If you want to know more about what organizations like ‘save the Family” do in the community, takes a look at www.savethefamily.org. Wherever you are, there’s probably a “Save the Family” type of organization in your community and certainly a food bank, check them out – they do good work.
There’s also another way of looking at the problem as most people look at unemployment numbers as a percentage of the workforce. Where in 1930 you might have 400 or 500 people populating a Hooverville settlement where the unemployment rate would be in the 15% range, that percentage would put ten times the number of people on the street today.
When President-Elect Obama says we have a long and difficult road ahead of us – believe it. If the leaders of governments around the country and the world don’t get it right during 2009, we’re going to be in for a very, very tough decade.