Subsistence Homesteads

[Alabama] Senator John Bankhead, Jr., sponsored the Subsistence Homestead Program in 1933. Of the $25 million appropriated for the program, Bankhead obtained $6 million, or nearly one-fourth the total, for Jefferson and Walker Counties. The money funded five subsistence communities at Pamerdale, Gardendale (Mount Olive), Trussville (called Cahaba Farms or "Slagheap Village"), Bessemer (called Greenwood), and Jasper (called Jasper Subsistence Farms or Bankhead Farms). Unemployed workers built the houses. Officials desired that each family combine part-time wage work with subsistence garden plots. Unfortunately the projects merely skimmed to top off Alabama's bottom class. Lengthy interviews, background investigations, letters of reference, employment records, and credit checks assured that most residents were formerly machinists, skilled artisans, professionals, or workers in service occupations. 
 -- from Alabama : the History of a Deep South State, 1994, p. 487.