The Phoenix Homesteads Historic District consists of two irregular shaped areas situated north of Thomas Road, south of Osborn Road, between 26th and 28th Streets. District was listed on the Phoenix Historic Property Register 1/90. This district consists of 240 acres and 72 buildings. The main building style is Pueblo and the Architect/Builder was Robert T. Evans and Vernon De Mars.
During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration was making a concerted effort to address long-term land use planning while improving farm production. One of the first steps taken was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933, an allotment plan to subsidize prices and reduce the disparity between farming costs and income. There was a conflict between the crop adjustment programs and the tendency of the unemployed urban population to return to the land as a means of survival in times of hardship. It became necessary to control this "return migration" in order to stabilize prices, especially in more rural areas. While the government could not prevent citizens from farming the land to survive, the Roosevelt administration instead acted to reduce the amount of excess production, which could drive prices down, in order to stabilize the agricultural economy. The result was the Subsistence Homestead Program which was described as a 11 back-to-the-farm" movement.
Existing farmland was purchased and subdivided into one to five acre farming plots. Low-income families were then relocated to the tracts where they could offset the cost of living by producing their own food. In order to keep production to a minimum on these small farm cooperatives, sites were chosen such that adequate non-farm employment was available nearby and the homesteaders included in this program had to be fit for industrial employment. While part-time farming as an income supplement was not a new idea, the American experience with organized, collective, "garden home" developments were very limited. As a result, the Subsistence Homestead Act became a controlled experiment in land planning, economics, housing design and social structure.
Period of Significance was from 1925-1949.
