She knew she had to go, despite her not being able to imagine moving elsewhere.
Maria Merritt has lived in El Sereno for most of her 30 years. Her small home on Poplar Boulevard served as a beacon in the turbulent life that led her to solid ground. There she raised four children, carrying the spells of paying work and ordinary family life, cooking big meals on Sundays, and decorated the front-painted windows with Christmas decorations in the winter.
Even when she was homeless, the vacant houses always waited for her to return. Almost five years ago, she broke in and retrieved it.
However, last fall, after months of eviction proceedings, Merritt let go of the house and left the neighbourhood that gave her much.
“It’s breaking me,” said Merritt, 57, the night before her departure. “It feels like a light shining like it’s shut down.”
She moved 11 miles away to an apartment in the Westlake Supported Housing Building. She first left her house on Poplar Boulevard in 2007, so she hoped that this decision would end the turbulent cycle of life. Things didn’t look good.
Merritt overlooks the empty kitchen on the day he moved to El Sereno in November, where he lived for four years.
The California Department of Transport’s failed 710 highway expansion and the home acquired to build it have reached the checker climax. Each person and family living in the house have reached their finale in the Saga.
Merit swings with her fragile mental health ups and downs.
She rented a two-bedroom Poplar Boulevard Cottage in 1995. I lived decades ago with tragedy, addiction and mental illness, and I couldn’t pay rent and my children were scattered around. Over a decade of homelessness continued, and sometimes slept on a central strip that stretches along the main drugs in the neighborhood.
Then one morning in spring 2020, she saw Angelenos’ group move to an empty Caltrans-owned house in protest of the homelessness crisis in LA. The next day, activists helped Merritt seize the Poplar Avenue home. Inside, she found photos of herself and her children from decades ago.
Merritt sees a mover packing his home in El Sereno in November. Yajiar Vida-Sylvestre, the supporter of the left Rike-Year, went to the left, which helped.
The pressure campaign from group members who call themselves retrievers has urged transports to legalize merit and the living situations of others. Caltrans has signed with the city of Los Angeles housing authorities to allow people in similar circumstances to a dozen Recryers to earn and pay rent for two years on the renovated property.
Merritt wanted to stay forever. With the highway project passing away, more than 30 Caltrans tenants and counts are buying the house at bargain prices. Many vacant properties are being sold as affordable homes. Merritt believed that owning a home would reinforce efforts to relieve the wounds that caused her child and repair their relationship.
However, Caltrans said Merritt was not eligible for a purchase plan and had to move in 2021 from the Poplar Boulevard home that the agency deemed unsafe to another state-owned home nearby.
Since the two-year agreement had long expired, housing authorities have been trying to force Merit and the rest of the group members.
Merritt was going to fight her eviction. Her second stint at El Sereno Holmes gave her stability to kick her methamphetamine habits, stabilizing her mental health and successfully applied it to the benefits of a social security disorder. She believed leaving would threaten her progress.
Merritt is in tears as supporter Yul Fuentes comforts her before moving out in November.
Other recoverers were also facing evictions. With the help of legal aid attorneys, the group removed multiple attempts and removed them in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Each time, housing authorities revise the incident. Six reconstructors still living in Caltrans-owned homes this month have court hearings that could lead to eviction decisions against them.
Due to the timing of Merritt’s case filed last year, lawyers representing others had a full caseload and she could not find her to help her.
It was overwhelming to go alone. In September, Merritt agreed to the deal. If she voluntarily leaves, housing authorities will pay her $15,000. It removes the threat that the sheriff’s deputies carry her away, and starts a fresh start by offering her eggs, allowing her to have more control over situations she believed would otherwise be inadequate.
“I want to live in the real world,” she said. “It creates tension to not move forward, so I can’t lie to myself.”
Caseworkers provided support services near MacArthur Park, leading Merit to a one-bedroom apartment. It is located in a new building, furnished and has a second floor deck overlooking the school.
But the busyness, crowds and busyness of the place – it is in one of the most overcrowded areas in the country – worried her.
Merritt’s physical health has deteriorated over the past year, and has been forced to rely on a cane, walker, or just hobble. After knee replacement surgery several years ago, her left leg was swollen. Sometimes her fingers and toes freeze and she can’t bend them. Her arms hold and she struggles to lift them up on her shoulders.
But she continues to try to remind herself, the situation around her departure may have been much worse.
Two other returners who accepted the $15,000 buyout returned homeless after leaving Caltrans home. The biggest fear of merit is getting back into the streets.
“Suffering,” she said. “Sun. Heat. Cold. What a mess.”
Merritt looks at photos of himself from years past hanging from the fridge in his Westlake apartment.
The moving day came in mid-November. The merit was cleaning and packaging during preparation. But the mornings of many of her clothes, the kitchen and other items remained boxed. The rest was too physically and emotionally stiff. As the moving van arrived closer, Merritt called for support.
Her 28-year-old daughter, Kiana, first appeared with a friend. Then came Martha Escadero, a returnee who lives on the streets at a Cartlan home with her two teenage daughters. Two women came who got words from the Rikamers text message chain, Merritt, next in need of help. They had ducts and masking tape and filled the cardboard box with the rest of Merritt’s belongings.
Until late afternoon, the van was packed and on my way to Westlake. From her new sofa, Merritt saw the movement carefully stack hers over the unit.
“I can’t believe I’m leaving,” she told the caseworker on the phone, scanning clothes hangers, handbags, space heaters and flower pots. “I’m leaving.”
A few days later, she returned the key to El Sereno’s house.
The transition to Westlake almost destroyed her. I got over it with stress, and Merit cut my hair off. She’s a buzz cut that resembles her appearance when she lived on the street. Her mental health has deteriorated. Thoughts and speeches became less consistent.
Every day, every month, every month, she stabilized herself. Her apartment felt safer than her older home. There, I felt that I needed to jump on the unfamiliar noise and lock the windows and doors, including the bedroom closet.
Merritt smiles in the kitchen of her new Westlake apartment in March.
She hangs photos and decorations in her new apartment. Her most precious is her grandchildren and photographs of their artwork. At the kitchen cabinet door, Merritt pinned a multicolored turkey from his 3-year-old grandson, made from brown paper bags for Thanksgiving. Seeing it reminds her of him and strengthens her.
“I’m just looking over there and he loves me. I have to get better,” Merritt said.
Her hair is back and she dyes some of it in a blue shade. On a recent weekday morning, Moll and Mexican Rice Merritt pots were cooked, waiting for her on the stove. A friend gave her half a dozen lemons from her tree, and Merritt washed the fruits with baking soda and water before placing them in a glass bowl.
Recently Merritt’s hobby has been cleaning and repairing posters and signs with positive assertions found at recycle stores. She works on one with the lyrics to “Amazing Blessing.” Another declares, “I’m a bit of a big deal.”
“I have a life,” she said. “I have a plan. I have a project that means nothing to some people. But for me it restores my heart, my soul and my heart. It brings me along like a puzzle in my head.”
Merritt will walk down the corridors of Westlake Apartments in March.
She is grateful for the relief her new apartment has given her, but she is not going to stay there for a long time. It’s too isolated. She rarely goes out because it gets dark.
Merritt misses what she had in El Sereno, which she still calls “my city.” Merritt remembers a weekly nearby visit to Cartran’s house from his daughter and young grandchild.
“They were there,” she said. “They were elevating me. I wasn’t alone.”
If Merritt has her path, she either returns to El Sereno or finds a home just as the family gathers. But she knows she has time. No one forces her to go anywhere. Every time she moves again, she is sure the decision will be hers.
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