Federal Emergency Relief Administration
New Deal-era U.S. government agency
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
During the Hoover administration, the federal government gave loans to the states to operate relief programs. One of these, the New York state program TERA (Temporary Emergency Relief Administration), was set up in 1931 and headed by Harry Hopkins, a close adviser to then-Governor Roosevelt. A few years later, as president, Roosevelt asked Congress to set up FERA—which gave grants to the states for the same purpose—in May 1933, and appointed Hopkins to head it. Along with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), it was the first relief operation under the New Deal.
FERA's main goal was to alleviate household unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local and state government. Jobs were more expensive than direct cash payments (called "the dole"), but were psychologically more beneficial to the unemployed, who wanted any sort of job for self-esteem. From May 1933 until it closed in December 1935, FERA gave people and localities $3.1 billion (the equivalent of $70.8 billion in 2023). FERA provided work for over 20 million people and developed facilities on public lands across the country.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Federal Emergency Relief Administration” as new Deal-era U.S. government agency. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as new Deal-era U.S. government agency. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3067870. VIAF identifies the subject as 168498161. The Library of Congress control number is n50067288. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1935, 1931 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federal Emergency Relief Administration” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.