Cherry Orchard residents find new temporary home

By Illinois Public Media News— Health officials are moving forward with a plan to transfer residents living in Rantoul’s Cherry Orchard apartments to new homes.

This is in response to health concerns that have marred the apartment complex for nearly two and a half years. Health inspectors learned in Sep. 2007 that there was something wrong with the Cherry Orchard apartments after discovering sewage seeping from a septic system into nearby farmland. Since then, there have been reports of mold, inadequate heating, and power outages.

The landlords of the property, Bernard Ramos and his father, Eduardo, promised that by late last year they would address the septic tank issue by moving tenants into housing units that were up to code. Ramos told health officials that he would vacate two of the apartment buildings (#7 and #8) by Dec. 3. Then two other complexes (#2, #3, and #4) were supposed to be unoccupied by Dec. 20. Jim Roberts is the Director of Environmental Health with the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD). Roberts said there is only one building known to have a fully functioning septic system (#6).
 

“Ramos agreed to move people from occupied buildings to maybe another building that would have a properly treated sewage, and he failed to do so,” Roberts explained. “What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to eliminate the people from the places that we know have raw, untreated sewage.”

By Wednesday afternoon, there were still around a dozen residents living in the apartments.The landlords of the Cherry Orchard apartments are scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 24 for failing to move their tenants and fix their sewer and septic systems as originally promised.

“I don’t have enough money to move to another apartment,” said one tenant who has lived at Cherry Orchard with her four children for the last year and a half. “It’s not good for someone to live there.”

The Cherry Orchard apartments are home to many migrant workers who spend part of the year in Rantoul working for one of the large agricultural companies, like Pioneer, Monsanto, or Syngenta. Many of those workers move to Rantoul in the summer to work during the harvest season, and leave before the winter.

“We need to prevent people from moving in there until this (health) issue is addressed,” CUPHD administrator Julie Pryde said.

After a meeting Wednesday night between health officials and the tenants, the Salvation Army agreed to temporarily move Cherry Orchard’s current residents into hotels. The CUPHD is now trying to move those individuals into permanent homes with assistance from other human service agencies, like the United Way and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

The Cherry Orchard apartments, located on U.S. 45, are in an unincorporated part of Rantoul, making it difficult for health officials to enforce zoning ordinances. Pryde said her department is pushing to tighten the county’s housing codes.

“It’s not a problem that does not have a solution,” she said.