An 1877 Plan for Workers to Buy Seattle Homes

Now that rents are comparatively low in Seattle, it behooves the workingmen to prepare for themselves homes against the time when rents will advance to an almost insupportable rate, as they surely will so soon as the work on the next extension of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad begins next year. The plan offered is for the formation of a building association, with honest men as officers, and the purchase of a tract of land adjoining the city, say in Northern Seattle, where a street railroad along Front Street will place the resident within a few minutes' ride of the post office. The best system is that adopted by the Philadelphia Building Association. A poor man buys a lot 18 feet front by 90 feet deep for two hundred dollars, entering into an obligation to pay a yearly rental of $12, or 6 per cent. He then joins a building association, taking five shares and paying $1 per month per share. This money is auctioned to members to finance construction. With a $1,000 loan, he contracts with a builder for a brick house with a garden lot. In effect, it is a mortgage that never matures unless there is a failure to pay the interest. In practice, it only takes ten or twelve years to put him in absolute possession of his home.