Subsistence Homesteads Division
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | August 23, 1933 |
| Dissolved | May 15, 1935 |
| Superseding agency |
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| Agency executive |
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| Parent agency | United States Department of the Interior |
| Website | http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/096.html |
The Subsistence Homesteads Division of the US Department of the Interior (DSH or SHD) was a New Deal agency that was intended to give safe residences to urban poor in small plots of land that would allow them to sustain themselves. Unlike subsistence farming, subsistence homesteading is based on a family member or members having part-time, paid employment.
The Subsistence Homesteads Division Director, Milburn L. Wilson, defined a "subsistence homestead" as follows:
A subsistence homestead denotes a house and out buildings located upon a plot of land on which can be grown a large portion of foodstuffs required by the homestead family. It signifies production for home consumption and not for commercial sale. In that it provides for subsistence alone, it carries with it the corollary that cash income must be drawn from some outside source. The central motive of the subsistence homestead program, therefore, is to demonstrate the economic value of a livelihood which combines part-time wage work and part-time gardening or farming.
DSH projects "would be initiated at the state level and administered through a nonprofit corporation. Successful applicants would offer a combination of part-time employment opportunities, fertile soil for part-time farming, and locations connected to the services of established cities."
The Subsistence Homesteading Program was based on an agrarian, "back-to-the-land" philosophy which meant a partial return to the simpler, farming life of the past. Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt both endorsed the idea that for poor people, rural life could be healthier than city life.
Cooperation, community socialization, and community work were also emphasized. However, going "back-to-the-land" did not always sit well with people stuck in outlying "stranded communities" without jobs. According to Liz Straw of the Tennessee Historical Commission, the most controversial were those rural communities of long-unemployed miners or timber workers whom opponents of subsistence homesteading thought unlikely to thrive without better job opportunities.
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