“Hoovervilles” during the Great Depression consisted of—?

Answer 1

Basically a "Hooverville" would be a gathering of people left homeless by the Depression. They build shacks from cardboard and steel scraps scavenged from dumps and lived together for protection and on the outskirts of cities in the hopes of finding work in the city. They were called "Hooverville"s as a slap to Herbert Hoover, the current president, who many people blamed for the poor economy.

Answer 2

Hoovervilles were shacks in which some people lived in becasue they had lost their home because of lack of money. The shacks were usually outside of larger towns, and were made out of pretty much anything people could use (cardboard,etc). They were called "Hoovervilles" because Herbert Hoover was president at that time and was getting blamed for the lack of money.

Answer 3

Hoovervilles were comprised of shanties (or shacks)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/hess/Slang/1933/hooverville.html

This bit of text talks about a shanty town in the St. Louis, MO area, near the Mississippi River:

"During the years of the Depression, a squatter's village appeared on the shores of the Mississippi River. Here, in the Riverfront district of the city, a community of poor and disparaged people sprang up and took residence. These people had come from all over the city and being homeless, they were forced to find residence in the makeshift shantytown. These homes were hasitly built out of any readily available items and resembled log cabins with many odd parts."

From: http://www.umsl.edu/virtualstl/phase2/1930/buildings/hooverville.htm


This site has a picture of a Hooverville shack:
http://www.k-state.edu/english/nelp/childlit/1930s/rothstein_hooverv_shack.html