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	Podcast:		Other News
	Episode:		For Last Residents, Closing Of The Merkle Hotel Means Homelessness
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:04:58
	Publish Date:		2018-11-10 12:05:00
	Description:		The Merkle Hotel is a vestige -- one of the last residential hotels in Western Washington geared toward housing low-income people. These hotels were once commonplace in this region, particularly in Seattle and Tacoma, but also in many other towns with sizable populations of transient and/or immigrant workers. “What I remember from the first time I walked in was the ceiling fan in the lobby, and the dust being heaped so high on top of the ceiling fan that it was spilling off,” said KNKX’s Will James. “And that gives you a sense of what kind of building this is. It is, for lack of a better term, a flophouse.” Will joined Sound Effect’s Gabriel Spitzer to talk about the fate of the Merkle Hotel. When he first visited the Merkle, it was down to about 15 residents. The hotel, situated in an out-of-the-way part of Tacoma, has been bought by a developer and is being rehabbed to create student housing. All the remaining residents were told they would have to leave, and it had been gradually
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