- KNKX tracked down 12 former tenants of the Merkle displaced in 2018 and found that half — six in total — spent time homeless at some point after they were forced out of the building, staying in shelters, cars, storage units or the streets. That’s according to interviews with the tenants themselves, their relatives, or people who helped them.
In just three years, at least five former tenants have died.
KNKX first interviewed Merkle tenants as they scrambled to find housing in the days before the building closed. That’s where the story ended: with residents teetering on the brink of homelessness. For years, no one knew the full toll of displacing them.
Recreating the paths of people forced to leave the Merkle required tracking down former tenants, their relatives and nonprofit workers and advocates who helped them, and finding clues in hundreds of pages of government emails, court files and death certificates.
What emerged is a detailed picture of how people cross the threshold from living inside to living in shelters and on the streets.
Homelessness has risen to the highest-profile social and political issue in many West Coast cities and, experts say, what happened at the Merkle provides a window into one way that has happened.