Why didn’t people sleep on the streets of US cities during World War II?

The Great Depression featured vast Hoovervilles, which expanded the hobo “jungles” of earlier times. When wartime production drew millions into industrial cities that had no beds for them, why didn’t the Hoovervilles expand into Rosie-the-Rivetervilles? The corollary is that the U.S. had a brief period – the Midcentury Moment I’ve called it in other contexts – when it was rare for people to sleep rough.

ChatGPT 4o explains:

During World War II, while massive housing shortages and overcrowding plagued U.S. industrial cities due to the rapid influx of war workers, there is little historical evidence of widespread outdoor camping or street homelessness akin to what would emerge decades later. Here’s a closer look at what happened:

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🏙️ Context: Wartime Urban Overcrowding (1941–1945)

Causes of Housing Shortage

• The wartime economy brought millions of workers to shipyards, munitions factories, and aircraft plants, especially in cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Norfolk.
• Wartime restrictions (rationing of materials like steel and lumber) made it difficult to build new housing, even as populations surged.
• Racial segregation and restrictive covenants also severely limited where Black migrants—especially from the South—could live.

Consequences

• Families doubled and tripled up in homes.
• Basements, attics, garages, and even chicken coops were converted to housing.
• Boarding houses were packed well beyond capacity.
• Sleeping shifts became common—hot bedding—where people shared the same bed in alternating shifts.
• Public facilities (e.g., YMCA, USO centers) often served as temporary shelters for new arrivals.

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🏕️ Outdoor Camping: Rare, Not Normative

Despite extreme overcrowding:

• Camping outdoors was not widespread, largely because:
  • Most migrants came with job offers and social connections.
  • Cities and the federal government scrambled to house war workers, using temporary housing (e.g., trailers, barracks, quonset huts) via agencies like the Federal Public Housing Authority.
  • People generally found some form of indoor shelter, no matter how substandard or overcrowded.
• In very few instances, local newspapers reported families sleeping in cars or setting up makeshift camps near employment centers, but these were temporary and unusual.
• Crucially, the cultural expectation remained that even the poorest workers would find a roof, however humble.

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🏘️ Federal Intervention and Temporary Housing

• The Lanham Act (1940) authorized emergency housing for war workers.
• Over 600,000 units of federally built temporary housing were constructed between 1940–1945, often as entire planned communities with schools, canteens, and services.
• For example:
  • Richmond, CA (Kaiser Shipyards) had entire wartime housing tracts built, such as Atchison Village and Harbor Gate.
  • Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR saw the construction of Vanport (which housed over 40,000 at its peak before its 1948 flood destruction).

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📜 Conclusion

While WWII-era industrial cities were severely overcrowded, this did not lead to large-scale outdoor camping or visible homelessness like in the 1980s. Federal programs, private initiative, and social networks ensured that most people found some form of indoor shelter, however minimal. The cultural and policy frameworks of the time treated housing as a national war necessity, leading to unprecedented (if temporary) levels of intervention.