By Pam G. Dempsey/CHAMPAIGN –  The trial of a Champaign father-son landlord team scheduled for Monday has been continued to Feb. 28.

The pair, Bernard Ramos and his father, Eduardo, have yet to comply with an agreement they made with the Champaign County Public Health Department in December to vacate five of the eight buildings at Cherry Orchard Apartments, a complex south of Rantoul.

By Dave Hinton/Rantoul Press — Hermalinda Cruz moved out of her apartment Thursday afternoon.

That’s not a newsworthy event under most circumstances. But for Cruz, it took a bit of courage and came with a sense of relief as she exited unsafe and unsanitary surroundings.

Cruz and three of her children were among the residents living at Cherry Orchard apartment complex in rural Rantoul, in conditions that Julie Pryde, administrator of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, called “appalling.”

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.

By Jessica Bourque / For CU-CitizenAccess — In a stuffy, dimly lit basement located in downtown Urbana, Ella Kinzie sits hunched over at a table, a pile of unopened letters by her side. She is hard at work, doing a job similar to Santa Claus’s, reading over wish lists and turning them into realities.

She sends a cookbook to Cristina, who wants to learn how to bake cupcakes, a Spanish- English dictionary to Alejandro, who longs to speak better English, and an advertising book to Maurice, who wishes to start his own business one day.  

“Even the most ordinary requests are special to me because it’s like these few books are going to make such a difference in that person’s quality of life,” said Kinzie.

By Pam G. Dempsey —  A bench trial has been scheduled for Jan. 24 for a Champaign father-son landlord team who have not yet complied with an agreement they made with the Champaign County Public Health Department to vacate five buildings in an apartment complex south of Rantoul.

Bernard Ramos and his father Eduardo agreed in November to empty five of the eight buildings known as Cherry Orchard apartments by Dec. 20.

Thanks to the efforts of a journalism class at the University of Illinois, you now know the true measure of crime on campus.

Pam G. Dempsey — The Champaign County Zoning Board of Appeals took comments Thursday night on proposed changes to zoning ordinances that will give Wilber Heights residents more freedom to improve their homes.

Wilber Heights – a small neighborhood located on north Market Street behind Market Place Mall – is a mix of industrial and residential property. A nearly 40-year-old county ordinance zoned the area industrial, despite the heavy mix of residential property. 

Because of the zoning, existing homes were deemed nonconforming, which prevented owners from making improvements to their properties beyond 10 percent of their replacement value annually.

By Fawn Clark/ For CU-CitizenAccess —The Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty has released Building a Pathway to Dignity and Work, a report with 42 legislative recommendations for cutting extreme poverty in Illinois in half by 2015.

About 760,000 people live in extreme poverty in Illinois, which is defined as a family that earns less than half of the poverty level.