A homeless woman who occupied her old, vacant home is saying goodbye

She knew she had to go even though she couldn’t imagine moving somewhere else.

Maria Merritt has lived in El Sereno the better part of 30 years. Her little home on Poplar Boulevard served as the beacon in a turbulent life that led her to solid ground. She raised her four kids there, had a well-paid job and a spell of normal family life, cooking big meals on Sundays and adorning the front picture window with Christmas decorations in winter.

Even when she was homeless, the vacant house was always waiting for her return. Nearly five years ago, she broke in and reclaimed it.

But last fall, following months of eviction proceedings, Merritt let go of the home and left the neighborhood that gave her so much.

“It’s breaking me inside,” said Merritt, 57, on the eve of her departure. “I feel like a light shining that’s going to be shut down.”

She moved 11 miles away to an apartment in a Westlake supportive housing building. She hoped the decision would put an end to the cycle of turbulent living since she left her Poplar Boulevard home for the first time in 2007. But her sense of stability began to fragment the moment she arrived. Things were not looking good.

Merritt looks over an empty kitchen on moving day in the home where she lived for four years in El Sereno in November.

The California Department of Transportation’s half-century epic over the failed 710 Freeway expansion — and the homes the agency acquired to build it — is coming to a checkered climax. Each person or family living in the houses is reaching their own finale to the saga, some happy, some sad, many in between.

Merritt’s swings with the ups and downs of her fragile mental health.

She rented the two-bedroom Poplar Boulevard cottage in 1995, living there a dozen years before tragedy, addiction and mental illness left her unable to pay the rent and led her kids to scatter. More than a decade of homelessness followed, at times spent sleeping in a median strip that stretches along the neighborhood’s main drag.

Then, one morning in spring 2020, she watched a group of Angelenos move into vacant, Caltrans-owned homes in protest against L.A.’s homelessness crisis. The next day, the activists helped Merritt seize the Poplar Boulevard home, which had remained empty since she’d abandoned it. Inside, she found decades-old photos of herself and her children.

A pressure campaign from group members, who call themselves Reclaimers, pushed the transportation agency to legalize the living situations for Merritt and the others. Caltrans contracted with the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles to allow a dozen Reclaimers and those in similar situations to live and pay rent for two years in refurbished properties.

Merritt wanted to stay forever. Now that the freeway project is dead, more than 30 Caltrans tenants and counting are buying their homes at bargain rates. Scores of vacant properties are being sold off as affordable housing. Merritt believed owning the house would help atone for the hurt she’d caused her children and bolster her efforts to repair their relationship.

But Caltrans said Merritt didn’t qualify for the purchase plan, and in 2021 she had to move out of the Poplar Boulevard home, which the government agencies deemed unsafe, to another state-owned house nearby.

Since the two-year agreements have long expired, the housing authority had been trying to force Merritt and the remaining group members out.

Merritt intended to fight her eviction. Her second stint in El Sereno homes gave her the stability to kick her methamphetamine habit, steady her mental health and apply successfully for Social Security disability benefits. She believed leaving would threaten her progress.

Two women, one of them crying, embrace at the door of a home.

Other Reclaimers were facing eviction, too. With the help of legal aid lawyers, the group defeated multiple attempts in Los Angeles County Superior Court to remove them. Each time, the housing authority refiled the cases. This month, the six Reclaimers still living in Caltrans-owned homes have court hearings that could lead to eviction judgments against them.

Because of the timing of when Merritt’s case was filed last year, the attorneys representing the others had full caseloads and she couldn’t find one to assist her.

Going it alone was overwhelming. In September, Merritt agreed to a deal. The housing authority would pay her $15,000 if she left voluntarily. That would remove the threat of sheriff’s deputies hauling her out, provide a nest egg to start anew and give her more control of a situation she believed would otherwise turn out poorly.

“I want to live in a reality world,” she said. “I cannot lie to myself because that brings me tension not to move forward.”

Caseworkers steered Merritt to a one-bedroom apartment with supportive services near MacArthur Park. It’s in a new building, furnished and has a second-floor deck that overlooks a school.

But the location’s busyness, congestion and crowding — it’s in one of the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the country — worried her.

Merritt’s physical health has worsened over the past year, forcing her to rely on a cane, walker or just hobble to get around. Her left leg swells after knee replacement surgery a couple years ago. Sometimes, her fingers and toes freeze and she’s unable to bend them. Her arms seize up and she struggles to raise them above her shoulders.

Yet, she keeps trying to remind herself, the circumstances around her departure could have been far worse.

Two other Reclaimers who accepted the $15,000 buyout returned to homelessness once they left the Caltrans homes. Merritt’s greatest dread is going back to the streets.

“The suffering,” she said. “The sun. The heat. The cold. Oh my God.”

Moving day came in mid-November. Merritt had been cleaning and packing in preparation. But the morning of, much of her clothes, kitchenware and other items remained unboxed. The rest was too hard, physically and emotionally. As the hour for the moving van’s arrival approached, Merritt called around for support.

Her 28-year-old daughter, Kianna, showed up first with a friend. Then came Martha Escudero, a Reclaimer who lives up the street in a Caltrans home with her two teenage daughters. Two women who got word from a Reclaimers’ text message chain that Merritt needed help came next. They brought duct and masking tape and filled cardboard boxes with the rest of Merritt’s belongings.

By late afternoon, the van was packed and on its way to Westlake. From her new couch, Merritt watched the movers pile her stuff carefully throughout the unit.

“I can’t believe I’m getting out,” she told a caseworker over the phone, scanning her clothes hangers, handbags, space heater, and flower pots. “That I’m leaving.”

A few days later, she handed back the keys to the El Sereno home.

The transition to Westlake nearly broke her. Overcome with stress, Merritt cut off her hair, a buzzcut that resembled her appearance when she lived on the streets. Her mental health worsened; thoughts and speech became less coherent.

Day by day, week by week and month by month, she steadied herself. Her apartment felt more secure than the old house, where she jumped at unfamiliar noises and felt the need to lock the windows and doors — including her bedroom closet — every time she’d leave.

A woman smiles while standing in the kitchen of her new Westlake apartment in March.

She’s hung photos and decorations in the new apartment. Her most prized are the pictures of her grandchildren and their artwork. On a kitchen cabinet door, Merritt pinned a multicolored turkey her 3-year-old grandson crafted out of a brown paper bag at Thanksgiving. Seeing it reminds her of him, and strengthens her.

“I just look over there and it’s like, ‘He loves me. I have to get better,’” Merritt said.

Her hair has grown back, and she’s dyed part of it with a blue tinge. On a recent weekday morning, a pan of mole and Mexican rice Merritt cooked waited for her on the stove. A friend had gifted her a half-dozen lemons from her tree, and Merritt rested them in a glass bowl after washing the fruit with baking soda and water.

Lately, Merritt’s hobby has been cleaning and repairing posters and signs with positive affirmations she finds at thrift stores. She’s working on one with the lyrics of “Amazing Grace.” Another declares, “I Am Kind of A Big Deal.”

“I have a life,” she said. “I have plans. I have projects that to some people don’t mean nothing. But to me, it restores my mind and my soul and my heart. It gets me together like a puzzle in my head.”

A woman walks through the hallway of an apartment building.

She’s grateful for the relief her new apartment has given her, but doesn’t intend to remain there for long. It’s too isolating. She rarely goes out after dark.

Merritt misses what she had in El Sereno, which she still calls “my city.” Merritt remembers the near weekly visits to the Caltrans home from her daughter and young grandson, how much the 3-year-old enjoyed playing in the backyard.

“They were there,” she said. “They were elevating me. I was not alone.”

If Merritt has her way, she’ll return to El Sereno or find a house somewhere else that’s just as welcoming for her family to gather. But she knows she has time. No one is forcing her to go anywhere. Whenever she moves again, she’s confident the decision will be hers.

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