There's a complicated and painful story here. According to other news sources, the Merkle Hotel was built in 1913 and was last operated as 40 single room occupancy units. The building was ill-maintained: it had rats, bedbugs, noise problems, and broken windows covered with plyboard. But it also cost less than $400 per month with no background checks or security deposits required.

KNKX wrote another article that explains why Seattle lost so much of this type of housing:

https://www.knkx.org/south-sound/2021-12-10/in-the-loss-of-t...

The key reason: following a deadly fire in a hotel like this in the 1970s, family members of victims sued the city. The city passed new safety ordinances. The safety ordinances brought higher safety and higher prices.

I see a lot of questions in this story but no easy answers. It's not safe to build more buildings like this one. It wasn't even sanitary or comfortable to live in the old one; someone could be fairly described as a "slumlord" for renting properties like the Merkle Hotel circa 2017. But forcing people on the edge out of a slumlord property is even worse for them. Building new properties is part of the solution, but it takes a long time for the 46 new micro-apartment units redeveloped on the site ("Tacoma Flats") to fall in price enough for people at these low income levels to afford them.

For the lightly curious:

> 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.

I think we need to agree on two basic things in order to move forward:

1.) fact: not everyone is capable of supporting themselves (temporarily or permanently).

2.) cultural standard: it is unacceptable to allow people to die from exposure or hunger.

If we collectively agree (and believe this in our hearts, not just saying it), then we can prevent what happened in the article from recurring. It may be a matter of resources. We may need to provide something like state-run SROs for a hundred thousand people in this country. It will cost money.

Personally I would happily pay an extra 10% in taxes if I knew that nobody was forced to go hungry or sleep outside in this country. I have friends who were rough sleepers. I've come close to being homeless myself, which is incredibly stressful BTW.

There have been decades of criticism of "slumlords", and various laws to bring up the standards of housing to what are essentially middle-class expectations.

This article now nostalgically glorifies real low-income housing with no proper kitchen, and mice and bedbugs.

It shows that you can't wave away problems with laws. Mandate nice apartments, and the cost will go up.

You can rely on charity or government programs, but the donors and taxpayers/voters have limited resources that they are willing to part with.

Substance abuse is a major factor because, honestly, few really make it out. It's most effective to do something before addiction.

I'm against the war on drugs in general. But when it comes to meth or herione, sometimes I wonder...

One of the problems is that you probably can't legally build something like that again. You have to build an apartment with a full kitchen and parking spots.

Is there something somewhere in between renting and home ownership? Something where you can live simply without having to deal with the extra responsibilities of home ownership, but where you also don't have the risk of getting bought out and evicted? I guess that's like rent control, but it wouldn't apply to every property. Is this kind of what Section 8 is?

Title of the article should be “low supply of housing units relative to demand resulted in higher prices than some people could afford, possibly resulting in some people dying”.

As a non-native English speaker, I was wondering what kind of shitty and unethical hacking that developer did in order to kill 6 people.

Article seems to fit perfectly within site guidelines. I don't see any reason it should be flagged.

sad story but is this really fit content suited for hacker news? (no ill intent meant)

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When I was in elementary school class one day I tipped my chair backward far enough that the kid behind me thought I'd tip over, so he put his foot gently against the bottom of one leg to prop me up. I didn't feel it, and so relied on it to tip back even further.

Then the kid had to stand up, and withdrew his foot, without malice. I flopped over backward and rung my bell pretty good on the floor. I don't think that would have happened if that kid hadn't propped me up.

I can't blame the kid who tried to help. It was my own damn fault.

Charity can do a lot of good, but not necessarily. And even when it does there is no obligation to continue it forever.