The economic devastation of the 1930s in the USA was caused by the stock market crash that closed fifty percent of all banks in America and put fifteen million people out of work, leaving 2.5 million families homeless.
The hardship was heightened when dust storms swept across the Great Plains, removing 5,400 tons of topsoil and destroying the productivity of 160 million acres of once-fertile farmland. An additional 2 million families became homeless as they left their farms looking for work. John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family moving from the Great Plains to California in hopes of work.
President Roosevelt’s New Deal created 29 social service programs to help lessen the effects of the Great Depression. These programs gave hope to a suffering nation, but the Depression and homelessness did not start to lift until jobs were created when the economy was strengthened during World War II.
By the 1950s, homelessness that had ravaged families was nearly eliminated, and the number of single homeless men was decreasing at a rate that caused some to think homelessness might be ended in the USA by the end of the 1960s.
Then, the 1980s brought us Modern-day homelessness. We responded by bringing back the solutions of the 1930s. The only problem with that plan is that the 1930s solutions did not work on modern-day homelessness, increasing the number of homeless over the past forty-five years.
The Team at Hand Up Housing
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