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The Subsistence Homesteads Division of the Department of the Interior (DSH or SHD) "created model communities, moving urban poor to small plots of land where they would live in safe, clean houses and learn to produce enough food to become self-sustaining."

"About 100 subsistence homesteads were built across the nation."

Unlike subsistence farming, subsistence homesteading is based on a family member or members having part-time, paid employment. Subsistence homesteading "settles a family on a plot of land where it can grow most of its food and make many of its goods, plus a part-time paid job for cash income."

Definition and description
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."

Three groups were targeted by this program: "Stranded workers" – Intended to help logging communities at risk due to declining timber supplies, or miners facing economic-related shutdowns, etc. "Farm projects" - Intended to help farm families that had been struggling to work poor land. "Industrial homesteads" - Redistributed families from congested urban areas into the exurban countryside. A contemporary description, in 1934, commented that this plan was based on the decentralization of industry and of people: In essence, the subsistence homestead plan means that the low-income industrial worker shall have a small plot on which to grow his food, and that the agricultural worker who raises nothing more than a bare living shall have a small factory near by, at which he can earn some cash.

Philosophy
The Subsistence Homesteading Program was based on a "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. Homesteaders were expected to work for the good of the community as well as for their own families. The government supported and encouraged adult education and women's clubs. The goal was to educate the stranded families to a better and healthier way of life. In addition to developing homemaking skills, the women were strongly encouraged to work with crafts, especially weaving, as a method of providing additional support for their families. However, going "back-to-the-land" did not always sit well with people stuck in outlying "stranded communities" without jobs. According to Liz Straw, The stranded communities, composed primarily of miners or timber workers who had been in and out of work since the 1920s, were the most controversial of the homestead communities. The communities brought about several protests from opponents of the "back-to-the-land" movement who did not believe that the communities would ever support themselves because they were located in rural areas where little or no job opportunities existed for the homesteaders. Director M.L. Wilson was described as "a shy man who shuns publicity" in a 1934 article by The Unofficial Observer. "Shaggy in appearance, with a jag-toothed smile and bulky as a boulder, M.L. has a genial smile which carries him along easily through a maze of conflicting interests, ideas, and rackets ... behind the scenes he is one of the great social inventors of the country."

Wilson's former assistant, Donald C. Blaisdell, gave more background on the concept of subsistence homesteading in a 1973 interview:

This is a long way around to get to the connection between working at a job in industry and having a subsistence homestead at someplace where you could raise a few vegetables and have a cow and have an acre of land, with a horse maybe, in order to combine your wages as an industrial employee with a subsistence from your own crop. Mr. Wilson, as I came to know later, went back to the old Mormon idea which was so important in the Mormon settlements of the inter-mountain area in the West where the Mormon towns always had enough land on each of the lots so the settler could have a cow or could raise a garden and could get his subsistence that way rather than being completely dependent on any other job that he might have had. I didn't think Mr. Wilson ever put it in exactly those direct terms, but I can see this was the philosophical background out of which the idea of the subsistence homesteads came. And this was authorized in, I forget what legislation it was, but I think it was one of the original Public Works authorizations and appropriations and it was put in the Department of the Interior, and Mr. Wilson came to Washington to head that up, I may be incorrect in that, but in any event he was head of the program. MCKINZIE: Did you, as a man who just had met M. L. Wilson, subscribe to this idea of independence insofar as the industrial worker was concerned, the idea of raising part of his own food? BLAISDELL: Yes, I think that I could say that this did appeal to me as something to try out. I had no idea, nobody had any idea, whether it was a viable way of dealing with unemployment or of providing for additional real income to the industrial worker in normal times, so-called. But anyhow it did appeal to me, and this I think was one of the things that made me receptive to his idea that I come to Washington as his assistant, you see. This was in 1936.

History
Carl Cleveland Taylor, the 36th President of the American Sociological Society, served as a sociologist for the SHD.

Some of the subsistence homesteading communities included African Americans. DSH Assistant Supervisor John P. Murchison wrote to W. E. B. DuBois in April 1934 for advice on racial integration and how to incorporate African Americans into the program. Eleanor Roosevelt took a personal interest in the project, and became involved in setting up the first community, Artuhrdale, WV after a visit to the stranded miners of Scotts Run.

There was strong opposition to the idea of subsistence homesteads, as undercutting agricultural prices, unions, and the labor supply for manufacturing. One writer characterized the program as follows: It amounted in effect of the secession of all but commercial agriculture from the monetary system, and the creation of an entirely new type of society based on the scientific use of land and the decentralization of industry.

Nonetheless, as of 2011, some communities, such as Arthurdale, West Virginia, in which Eleanor Roosevelt was personally involved, maintain an active memory of the program.

List of DSH subsistence homesteading communities

 * Aberdeen Gardens
 * Arthurdale, West Virginia
 * Austin Homesteads (Austin Acres), in Austin, Minnesota
 * Bankhead Farms, near Jasper, Alabama
 * Beauxart Gardens
 * Cumberland Homesteads
 * Dalworthington Gardens
 * Dayton Homesteads, Dayton, Ohio
 * Decatur Homesteads, Decatur, Indiana
 * Duluth Homesteads, Duluth, Minnesota
 * El Monte Homesteads, El Monte, California
 * Granger Homesteads, Granger, Iowa
 * Greenwood Homesteads, near Birmingham, Alabama
 * Hattiesburg Homesteads, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
 * Mount Olive Homesteads, near Birmingham, Alabama
 * Houston Gardens, Houston
 * Lake County Homesteads, Chicago
 * Longview Homesteads, Longview, Washington
 * Magnolia Homesteads, Meridian, Mississippi
 * McComb Homesteads, McComb, Mississippi
 * Jersey Homesteads
 * Penderlea, in Pender County, North Carolina
 * Phoenix Homesteads, Phoenix, Arizona
 * Piedmont Homesteads, Jasper County, Georgia
 * Palmerdale Homesteads
 * Richton Homesteads, Richton, Mississippi
 * San Fernando Homesteads, San Fernando, CA
 * Shenandoah Homesteads
 * Three Rivers Gardens, Three Rivers, Texas
 * Tupelo Homesteads
 * Cahaba (Trussville Homesteads), Jefferson County, Alabama
 * Tygart Valley Homesteads
 * Westmoreland Homesteads
 * Wichita Gardens, Wichita Falls, Texas

Communities

 * Complete List of New Deal Communities, of the Resettlement Administration, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, from the National New Deal Preservation Association