Are Bidenvilles the New Shantytowns?

Is America nearing the housing problem level of the Great Depression? During the Great Depression, people could not afford housing, so they built shacks from scrap construction materials. These shantytowns were named “Hoovervilles” after President Herbert Hoover.

E.J. Antoni published an article in The Daily Signal comparing the shantytowns with today’s parking lot “housing” areas. “Today, Americans increasingly live out of their cars because they can’t afford housing.” Should such housing arrangements be called “Bidenvilles”? 

The problem has gotten so bad that Sedona, Arizona, recently set aside a parking lot exclusively for these homeless workers. The city is even installing toilets and showers for the new occupants.

Apparently, the City Council thought installing temporary utilities was cheaper than solving the area’s cost-of-living crisis….

The average home in the city sells for $930,000, while most of the housing available for rent is not apartments, but luxury homes targeted at wealthy people on vacation.

With such a shortage of middle-class housing and with starter homes essentially nonexistent, low- and even middle-income blue-collar workers have nowhere to go at night but their back seat.

Much like America’s Great Depression in the 1930s, this marks a serious regression in our national standard of living. But shantytowns were not prevalent in the 1920s (a decade that began with a depression) or the 1910s. Nor were they ubiquitous following the Panic of 1907, which set off one of the worst recessions in American history.

Just as the Hoovervilles came because of poor policies from the Hoover administration, today’s Bidenvilles come from poor policies of the Biden administration and too much spending by both parties. The housing crisis will improve only if the Biden administration develops better policies and Congress spends less money.