not participate in social welfare for over 70 years. The poor farms declined in the U.S. after the Social Security Act took effect in 1935, with most disappearing completely by about 1950. Since the 1970s, funding for the care, well-being and safety of the poor and indigent is now split among county, state and federal resources. Poor farms have been replaced by subsidized housing such as public housing projects, Section 8 housing and homeless shelters. Canada In Canada, the poorhouse, with an attached farm, was the favoured model. According to a 2009 report by the Toronto Star, "pauperism was considered a moral failing that could be erased through order and hard work". The oldest government-supported facility of this type that is still standing (now a museum), is located in Southern Ontario between Fergus and Elora. The Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge was opened in 1877 and, over the years, housed approximately 1500 deserving poor, including those who were destitute, old and infirm, or disabled. The 60-bed house for inmates was surrounded by a 30-acre industrial farm with a barn for livestock that produced some of the food for the 70 residents and the staff and also provided work for them. Others worked in the House itself. A hospital was added in 1892. The nearby cemetery has 271 plots. In 1947, the House was converted into a home for the aged and in 1975 the building reopened as the Wellington County Museum and Archives, one of the National Historic Sites of Canada. Gallery See also Almshouse Low income housing Scottish poorhouse Homeless shelter References Further reading Rothman, David J., (editor). "The Almshouse Experience", in series Poverty U.S.A.: The Historical Record, 1971. Sweeney, Ed. (1927). Poorhouse Sweeney - Life in a County Poorhouse, with a foreword by Theodore Dreiser. New York: Bony & Liveright. External links Jack London's firsthand account of life and poorhouses in the 1902 East End of London Workhouses in and around Bures, Suffolk, by Alan Beales McLean County, Illinois Poor Farm Finding Aid A study of Kansas poor farms / by Kansas Emergency Relief Committee (1935) House Public housing Workhouses Poverty ja:救貧院 (プアハウス)