<P> A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States of America . They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States of America during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it . The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee . There were hundreds of Hoovervilles across the country during the 1930s and hundreds of thousands of people lived in these slums . </P> <P> Homelessness was present before the Great Depression, and was a common sight before 1929 . Most large cities built municipal lodging houses for the homeless, but the Depression exponentially increased demand . The homeless clustered in shanty towns close to free soup kitchens . These settlements were often trespassing on private lands, but they were frequently tolerated or ignored out of necessity . The New Deal enacted special relief programs aimed at the homeless under the Federal Transient Service (FTS), which operated from 1933--1935 . </P>

What were the homeless called during the great depression