Of the New Deal-era initiatives that sought to uplift unemployed Americans from poverty, the Farm Security Administration experimented with several programs to provide migratory families with stable housing and education to help unhoused Americans get back on their feet. As one of the first federal programs to offer affordable housing to unhoused individuals on a national scale, the FSA’s efficient and effective programs provide a blueprint for policymakers today.
Founded in 1937 with the goal of supporting struggling farmers, the Farm Security Administration is mostly remembered for its loan program to farmers. The FSA began as an outgrowth of the Resettlement Administration, a program conceived by Columbia University economist Rexford Tugwell to transform American farming by resettling farmers from the Dust Bowl onto arable land. From May 1935 to September 1937, Tugwell’s Resettlement Administration attracted the praise of progressive politicians and the ire of conservative leaders who saw it as too “communistic.” In 1937, to prevent Congress from axing the program, Tugwell resigned and agreed to transfer the program to the Department of Agriculture, then directed by its progressive secretary Henry Wallace.
Yet the organization also tasked itself with providing housing to migrant farmworkers moving to California from the Midwest. Many of them originated from the Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, and Texas, where severe droughts put thousands of vulnerable tenant farmers out of work. Between 1937 and 1940, the FSA established hundreds of tent camps across the United States to provide housing for thousands of migrant farmworkers—the Okies immortalized in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Tugwell envisioned these camps as self-sustaining projects that allowed tenants to create their own communities—an ethos that continued after Tugwell’s departure.
The program was a major success. In addition to increasing the income of participating farmers by 69%, the FSA camps housed thousands of migrant farmworkers. FSA camps also offered tenants educational opportunities and medical care. Teachers and social workers hired by the FSA provided courses to “rehabilitate” unemployed farmworkers, and public health officials inspected the camp facilities.
Perhaps the most visible legacy of the FSA was not its camps, but the program’s ability to document poverty in the United States. Although anti-poverty campaigns date back to the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, often these initiatives focused on urban settings such as the slums of New York City. To direct national attention towards the urgency of supporting migrant families, Tugwell selected Roy Stryker, a fellow Columbia economist, and charged him with running the program’s photography division.