LOCAL STORY CREDIT: PAULA BARD CREDIT: PAULA BARD DÉJÀ VU BY PAULA BARD AS THE LOOMING TSUNAMI OF EVICTIONS hovers on our horizon, it is worth a glance in the rearview mirror. Our country survived a crisis of this scale less than a hundred years ago. The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project estimates that 19 to 23 million, or one in five of the 110 million Americans who live in renter households, are at risk of eviction by September 30, 2020. Looking back, our history offers us an abundance of creative, resourceful models for weathering the current crisis. In the depths of the Great Depression, due to his woefully inadequate response to the country’s economic collapse, President Herbert Hoover was voted out of office. Franklin Roosevelt was voted into office in 1933. Millions had lost their homes and savings; one in four Americans was unemployed. Almost half of the banks had failed, and industrial production had plummeted by half. Bread lines and soup kitchens had sprung up across America’s cities. Farmers couldn’t harvest their crops, and had to leave their crops to rot in the fields while people went hungry. Thirteen million people were displaced during the Great Depression. Many drifted to shantytowns called “Hoovervilles,” named for President Herbert Hoover. Thousands lived along California highways, and Dust Bowl migrants were stopped at “bum blockades.” In Oakland, Pipe City, called Miseryville, 200 men lived in sections of unused sewer pipes. Thousands of homeless resided in New York City’s Central Park. Denver’s own shantytown, called Petertown, offered a marginal, cobbled-together home to many of the newly destitute in the Platte Valley. CREDIT: PAULA BARD The Civilian Conservation Corps, authorized by Congress in 1933, became one of the most popular and successful programs of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Young men (but not women) were able to sign on for six months and receive free housing, meals, health care, clothing, vocational high school, and training in trades. They were paid $30 a month; $25 of which was sent home to their impoverished families. Over nine years, almost three million men across the country worked with the CCC. From 1933 through 1942, 57,944 Coloradans joined 170 camps, living up to their motto: “Save the Soil, Save the Forests, Save the Young Men.” (Denver Post, 1958.) They lived in barracks and tents around the state. They built structures (1,278) in state and national parks, planted trees (21,848,085!), ridded farms of grasshoppers, rescued children, fortified highways and trails, and fought fires. (Robert W. Audretsch, Civilian Conservation Corps in Colorado.) Eight hundred U.S. parks display the vast legacy left by the CCC, with roads, bridges, visitor centers, water systems, CREDIT: PAULA BARD picnic areas, lodges, campgrounds, cabins, bathhouses, trails, lookouts, shelters, and comfort stations. These CCC structures still grace many of our parks here in Colorado. One of those is Red Rocks amphitheater, a local gem and one of the most ambitious and beloved in the state. Eighty years later, it would be hard to find a citizen anywhere on the front range who doesn’t fondly remember a concert or sunrise service at Red Rocks. As our current crisis grinds on, looking back can offer hope and creative solutions. We’ve been here before. ■ Update: On July 17, 2020, Governor Polis announced that the state of Colorado is budgeting $20 million in emergency rental and mortgage assistance for those whose housing has been impacted by the pandemic. Called the Property Owner Preservation Program, the funding comes from the federal CARES act targeting financial hardship. It must be spent by the end of the year. But, according to the Department of Local affairs, there is money available beyond this if it proves insufficient for local needs. Author’s Note: Thank you to the helpful people at Denver Public Library for their assistance with this article — especially Coi E. DrummondGehrig, manager, digital image sales & research, and Alejandro Alex Hernandez, research librarian. Sources: • Trials and Triumphs, A Colorado Portrait of the Great Depression by Stephen J. Leonard • America’s Parks: Cultural Landscapes of the New Deal by Susan Ives – livingnewdeal.org 10 DENVER VOICE August 2020
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