A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States 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.
