The City That Couldn't Keep Up: Seattle’s Housing Crisis of 1876

LACK OF ACCOMMODATION.

If it may seem in a country where material is abundant and free as air or water, the chronic complainer in Seattle has been that population steadily outruns its building enterprise. We hear the old story repeated, this was that I heard of the DIFFICULTY of PROCURING either tenements for residence or stands for business. Last year the demand became so exigent that an unusual degree of building was manifested through the rainy months of the winter, resulting in the addition to our city, during that time, of not less than 100 houses. The progress in this LINE has continued through the SUMMER, with A degree OF ENERGY AND HOPE THAN ANY previous year, but has HARDLY KEPT with the demand. AT the present time a decided manifestation IN THIS INDUSTRY which threatens A SERIOUS DEFICIENCY BEFORE THE WINTER IS OVER.

The current of immigration though not unusual is steady, and from the accounts which reach us from the grasshopper district there is promise of a heavy move from Kansas and neighboring States, late this fall and winter, of people who will want homes. The winter after the remnant of crops are gathered and sold off, is the period when the principal travel is to be expected, in the absence of any preventing occurrence.