Poverty and homelessness ...................................... Since the government provided no unemployment insurance, lost jobs quickly translated into lost homes and extreme poverty. In 1931, tent camps and shack towns began to appear. One large encampment that residents called "Hooverville" --in honor of the President whom they blamed for the Depression--grew in the mudflats south of downtown Seattle near Elliott Bay. City authorities ordered the site burned but it was quickly rebuilt, becoming in time a nearly all-male community of more than one thousand residents. Tolerated by authorities, it remained occupied until torn down by the city in 1941.
Until 1933 when federal assistance began, it was up to local authorities to assist impoverished residents. Counties and cities did what they could, establishing work programs more often than direct relief, but declining tax revenues made it hard to do very much. Churches and charities also helped as more fortunate residents often gave generously to feed and clothe the poor.
Founded in mid 1931, the Unemployed Citizen's League demanded more funds and different kinds of programs for the unemployed and forced city officials to leave Hooverville alone. With clubs in most neighborhoods of Seattle and Tacoma and several other cities, the UCL advocated self-help production, setting up cooperatives to exchange products and services. Farmers donated food in exchange for labor; carpenters, dentists, and seamstresses exchanged one kind of skill for another. In Seattle, UCL was so popular and powerful that the city's relief office used it to distribute public resources to the poor. For two years, as the economy went from bad to worse, the UCL helped some of the unemployed maintain themselves.