New Deal Accomplishment: Over 32 million WPA housekeeping visits, many to the chronically ill


Above: A WPA Housekeeping Aid helps care for a newborn "in a rural home near Brewton, Alabama," April 1939. Photo and quote from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA Housekeeping Aid prepares lunch for two brothers from a low-income family in Washington, DC, August 1938. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA Housekeeping Aid "teaches a small boy living in a three-room cabin, half a mile up the side of a hill, the correct way to brush his teeth," Catlettsburg, Kentucky, June 1938. Photo and quote from the National Archives.


Above: A young mother receives hairstyling assistance from a WPA Housekeeping Aid, in Brighton, Massachusetts, between 1935 and 1943. The common good can make people smile! Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A WPA Housekeeping Aid serves a meal to a Minnesotan in need of a helping hand, August 1938. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA Housekeeping Aid provides comfort to an elderly and "incurably ill" woman in Louisiana, between 1935 and 1943. "The husband is so crippled with rheumatism he can not do the housework though he gets part of the meals and cares for his wife at night. The housekeeper gives some time each day." Photo and quotes from the National Archives.

Over 32 million acts of human decency

Between 1935 and 1943, formerly unemployed women, now working in the WPA Housekeeping Aid program, made over 32 million visits to individuals and families in need. Other New Deal programs provided such assistance too. For example, thousands of women employed in the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration made housekeeping visits to tens of thousands of families.

The women who worked in the WPA Housekeeping Aid program performed a number of chores, including: house cleaning; washing clothes; childcare; hygiene assistance; taking patients to medical appointments; reading to them; helping them go for walks; and preparing and serving meals.

The New Deal's housekeeping aid program was considered a groundbreaking development for the care of the chronically ill in their own homes (however, the program's services were not limited to the chronically ill). Clients often suffered from neurological diseases, arthritis, cancer, cataract-induced blindness, dementia, and other problems that still plague us today. (See, for example, Mary C. Jarrett, Housekeeping Service For Home Care of Chronic Patients: Report of a WPA Project in New York City, October, 1935 to July, 1938 (1938).

According to a 2023 report from the Home Care Association of America: "The workforce shortage in home-based care has reached crisis proportions. Despite the best efforts of industry leadership and management, the gap between the numbers of patients and families seeking assistance and the availability of workers to provide that care is accelerating at an unsustainable pace."

Perhaps the New Deal's innovative Housekeeping Aid program--its administration, funding, employment, training, and practices--can be informative, as we seek solutions to our present critical needs.

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