The Rainier Valley zip code is 98118, which also includes Seward Park to the east. Rainier Valley's racial breakdown is as follows: 26.9% Caucasian, 26% African American, 34.1% Asian, 1% Native American, 1.6% Pacific Islander, 6.5% Mixed Race, and 3.4% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.2% of the population. 11.1% of families and 13.9% of the population were below the poverty line.
The Valley is centered on Rainier Avenue S. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S., its main (northwest- and southeast-bound) thoroughfares. Both Rainier Avenue and the Valley were named after Mount Rainier, towards which they are oriented. Rainier Avenue goes through several distinct phases, with the north-end being mainly commercial, the central (Columbia City) portion a densely populated historic district, and the southern portion a less dense collection of businesses, apartments, and houses. Rainier Beach, at the southern end, is where Van Gogh Development Corporation proposes to locate the Van Gogh Studio Lofts project.
The construction of the Holly Park and Rainier Vista housing projects to house war workers during World War II were seminal events. Following the war and until the Boeing crash of 1971, the Valley boomed with middle-class residential construction. Interracial couples in the 1950s found the Valley more accepting than the northern half of the city because of the relative lack of "deed covenants" found in the South End (these covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the 1960s).
Ironically, the Civil Rights Act precipitated a "white flight" from the Valley despite its historic diversity. The general exodus of whites from the Valley, Beacon Hill, and Seward Park, which began in the mid-60s, was primarily over by the mid-80s, when some historic "children of the Valley" began to return to it, as well as other non-immigrant adventurous sorts attracted to its affordable housing, its excellent access to parks, downtown, and the entire metropolitan area. With the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, a wave of Vietnamese immigrants opened businesses along abandoned areas of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South, extending four miles south of the official Little Saigon neighborhood on South Jackson Street. Perhaps more numerous than this Vietnamese wave was that of Filipinos throughout the Valley, though their businesses are fewer.
Many residents cite ethnic diversity, parks and transportation options as some of the main reasons they remain in or move to the Valley.Gentrification, including rising land prices and the new light rail line, may put a damper on diversity in the future, but this remains to be seen.
Beginning in the 1960s, Rainier Valley began to be viewed as "unsafe," with this view peaking in the 1980s. As noted, the Valley is diverse and did include two subsidized housing projects, Rainier Vista and Holly Park, that have been completely remodeled as mixed income neighborhoods.
The Valley neighborhoods bordering Rainier Avenue rival any other part of Seattle for age, since they are near the historic streetcar (removed in 1937) that connected downtown Seattle first to Columbia City and then to Renton. In 1892 rails were laid to Columbia City and later to Renton. The railroad, the reorientation of the Duwamish River and the lowering of Lake Washington, which caused the lake to drain west through Lake Union and the Ship Canal rather than south, made the valley dry enough to allow building, where it boomed along with the rest of Seattle on and after the Alaskan Gold rush right up to the Depression of the 1930s.
Today, opportunities abound for investors lured by financial incentives for development in this quadrant of the City. The Rainier Valley Cultural Development Fund is a major player in revitalization efforts, and the City of Seattle offers other financial incentives such as the Multifamily Tax Exemption program, New Market Tax Credits, and transit-oriented development zoning along the Light Rail corridor to encourage development.
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