Seattle’s Sudden Housing Crunch
An influx of new arrivals has left residents sleeping on hotel floors and cramming into single houses.
As a partial indication of the squeeze and jam of people here, we may say that twenty-six people, all comers on the last Dakota, occupy a single dwelling house in the northern part of town. As another instance, it is a fact that four families slept in chairs and on the floor of the barroom of one of the hotels here last Friday night, they being unable to get rooms or beds anywhere else.
“Twenty-six people, all comers on the last Dakota, occupy a single dwelling house in the northern part of town.”
This 1883 account of housing scarcity, driven by rapid population growth, echoes Seattle's contemporary struggle to accommodate a boom in population. The displacement and lack of affordable, dignified housing were early features of the city's growth machine.
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