OUR STORY:
THE BEGINNINGS
Learn about one of the strongest survival stories of any urban neighborhood in the U.S.
Origins: Homes That Followed the Water
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Long before glass towers and tech campuses defined the city, crude floating dwellings housed workers in logging camps. These early structures—simple one-story buildings set on log rafts—were practical solutions, designed to move with the timber floating down rivers.
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By the early 20th century, floating homes had spread across Seattle’s lakes, bays, and rivers. Some became summer retreats for wealthy families along Lake Washington, but most were permanent homes for people whose lives were tied to the water: fishermen, boatbuilders, laborers, and a few bootleggers and outlaws who added color—and trouble—to the mix.
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As Adam Woog wrote in his recent book on houseboat history, "Over the years, as their numbers and fortunes have risen and fallen, houseboats have helped cement two of the region’s defining characteristics: an intimate connection to maritime activities and a (more or less) tolerant attitude toward quirky lifestyles."
Learn more from Adam Woog, FHA Historian, in his recent book from Still Afloat: Seattle's Historic and Iconic Houseboats. Cover Art by Jack Quick
​​The “Classic” Houseboats of the 1920s
The houseboats built in the 1920s are still considered the classics. Crafted by boatworkers, they featured rounded “sprung” roofs and careful joinery. On Lake Union, these homes formed tight-knit waterborne neighborhoods—working-class, informal, and largely self-governing. They were also viewed with suspicion by those on land. As Seattle grew wealthier and more orderly, upland residents increasingly saw floating communities as messy, immoral, and dangerous.
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That tension never really went away.
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The Depression Boom: A Floating City
The Great Depression triggered an explosion of floating homes. People desperate for cheap shelter gathered discarded cedar logs and debris from the lakes and built what they hoped would be “temporary” housing. By the late 1930s, there were more than 2,000 houseboats in Seattle—some estimates place the number closer to 3,000.
Ironically, many of the floating homes still on the water today date from this period.
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As the economy recovered, the population shifted again. The respectable poor moved on, replaced by students, artists, radicals, free spirits, and people determined to live outside conventional rules. For decades afterward, “I lived on a houseboat in college” became a surprisingly common confession from otherwise conventional Seattleites.
Urban Renewal and the Fight to Exist
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In the 1950s, city officials decided the floating home communities had to go. Labelled a “cesspool” by one official, houseboats were targeted for demolition under urban renewal programs. Over-water apartments and commercial developments were encouraged to replace them.
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Numbers collapsed. By the early 1960s, fewer than 1,000 floating homes remained.
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In response, residents organized.
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The Floating Homes Association Is Born
In 1962, houseboaters formed the Floating Homes Association (FHA). It became the central force defending their existence. They tackled sanitation concerns by building sewer systems and connecting to city infrastructure. They loaned dock owners money, fought restrictive policies, and lobbied City Council relentlessly. By the late 1960s, changing laws required governments to pay fair market value for condemned housing—a rule houseboaters were prepared to enforce.
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At the same time, architects began designing new floating homes, now built on concrete and foam floats rather than logs. What had once been seen as blight was slowly becoming desirable.
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Terry Pettus
One name comes up again and again whenever the survival of Seattle’s floating homes is discussed: Terry Pettus.
Pettus was not a politician, developer, or lawyer by trade. He was a houseboater—deeply committed, stubbornly articulate, and relentlessly engaged. When city officials, developers, and moorage owners moved to eliminate floating homes during the urban-renewal era, Pettus became one of the movement’s most visible and effective defenders.
During the 1960s and 1970s, as hundreds of floating homes were demolished or forced off the water, Pettus helped organize residents, educate the public, and pressure City Council. He understood that floating homes were not just quirky structures but a legitimate form of housing—and that if they weren’t defended in policy, they would disappear in practice.
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Pettus played a key role in shaping arguments around equity, moorage security, and the right to remain, framing floating homes as communities rather than nuisances. He was instrumental in battles that led to shoreline protections, sewer connections, and the recognition of floating homes within Seattle’s regulatory framework.
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Perhaps most importantly, Pettus helped shift the narrative. Houseboats were no longer merely “slum boats” or targets for cleanup; they were part of Seattle’s cultural and working-class history. That reframing laid the groundwork for later victories, including the defeat of over-water apartment developments and the rise of co-op dock ownership.
(More information from FHA Archive files on Terry Pettus include: Houseboat history, photo of Terry (right), Video of Dixie Pintler interview)​
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Landmark Battles: Roanoke Reef
The 1970s brought another existential threat. After losing a fight against the Union Harbor Apartments, floating home residents and Eastlake neighbors drew a line at the proposed Roanoke Reef Apartments.
The legal battle lasted seven years and went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. The community won. The half-built concrete garage was demolished, and new floating homes took its place. (More information on the battle here)
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Seattle officially allowed floating homes under Shoreline policies—but only at existing moorages. That compromise would spark the next crisis.
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The Moorage Trap
Because new moorages were effectively prohibited, dock owners gained enormous power. When a floating home was evicted, it had nowhere to go. By the late 1970s, evictions, arbitrary rules, and moorage increases of 300–400% became common. One evicted homeowner sold their house for $100 rather than pay the cost of demolition.
Floating homeowners realized that the very laws that saved them from developers had handed a monopoly to moorage owners.
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Co-ops, Ordinances, and Survival
Two solutions emerged: buying docks collectively and fighting for legal protections. Co-op docks spread rapidly. By the mid-1980s, nearly 200 floating homes controlled their own moorage, up from just 40 a decade earlier. Where co-ops formed, tensions eased. Meanwhile, the FHA pushed for Equity Ordinances to regulate evictions and moorage fees. Court challenges struck down parts of these laws, leading to one of the darkest moments in 1983, when mass eviction notices were issued to entire docks.
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Once again, the community rallied—rewriting laws, filing anti-trust suits, and negotiating long-term leases. By 1986, an uneasy but lasting stability emerged.
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From “Slum Boats” to Seattle Icons
Public perception shifted dramatically. Once cheap, rough housing for outsiders, floating homes became highly regulated, increasingly expensive, and widely admired. Movies like Sleepless in Seattle helped cement their image, but long before Hollywood, floating homes were already as symbolically Seattle as the Space Needle or Pike Place Market.
Today, roughly 500 floating homes and 250 residential houseboats remain, almost entirely on Lake Union and Portage Bay.
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What Endures
What ultimately saved Seattle’s floating homes was not architecture, law, or money—it was community. You still feel it when you walk the docks - people care for one another.​
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That is the real history of Seattle’s floating homes—and the reason the Floating Homes Association still stands, committed to celebrating and protecting this community and its way of life.
