The Great Housing Crunch of 1889
Following the Great Seattle Fire, a surge of new arrivals finds the city's housing capacity stretched to the breaking point.
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.
Seattle is now so crowded that even the most optimistic person is beginning to worry. There has been talk to the effect that if the brick buildings now projected are started, it will be easier to rent the rooms and houses than it is now. A greater fallacy never existed. How are the hotel accommodations in Seattle? A Post-Intelligencer reporter yesterday visited fifteen of the most prominent hotels and gathered information. Every single hotel reported turning away dozens of applicants daily. The Everett house has twenty-two rooms and accommodates thirty guests, but on a daily average, they have to refuse twenty applicants. The Florence Hotel, which once had fifty rooms, is now using cots to squeeze in 100 lodgers. At the Occidental, the hallways are filled with cots, and sometimes a temporary camp is made on the office floor. This situation repeats across all fifteen major hotels, with hundreds of people turned away every night.
“On an average we refuse half a dozen applicants each day. My opinion is that more people arrive here now than previous to the fire.”
The housing pressure described here—fueled by a massive influx of people and a sudden reduction in available inventory—parallels the contemporary housing and affordability crisis in Seattle, showing that the city's struggle to house its growth is as old as the city itself.
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