The Great Seattle Housing Shortage: Why Immigrants Are Skipping Town
Despite a slowdown in new construction compared to last year, the city is facing a critical shortage of boarding houses and homes. Officials warn that without immediate building, the next wave of immigrants will bypass Seattle for other cities.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
THE BUILDING MOVEMENT.—There is not quite so much activity in the building line this Summer as in the rate last Winter and Spring, and yet there are one or more foundations laid every week, and all are kept occupied. There is even some renewal of the oft-repeated complaint that became so familiar last Fall, of an inability to find houses to shelter the home less. There may not now be so large accessions to our population from abroad as there was last spring, and yet it is pretty certain to be so large at least as to require a great many new houses. If these are not built in advance ready for occupancy, when the immigrants come, there is a chance that they may pass by and settle elsewhere than the case in many instances last year,—a result which we desire to prevent if possible.
In 1876, Seattle’s rapid growth after the Northern Pacific Railway construction created an immediate housing crisis, with the newspaper openly warning that a lack of inventory would drive new residents to competing towns. This mirrors modern Seattle's struggle where high demand and slow permitting processes threaten to push affordability out of reach for newcomers, forcing them to look elsewhere.
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