Community Corner

The Final Chapter From Sunset Village

As families leave the mobile park one by one due to unsanitary living conditions and sky-rocketing living costs, one resident shares the community's story of struggle.

Dear Editor,

This will be my final report from as we and many other residents are planning to discontinue paying our lot fee’s and mortgages and extending out the foreclosure and eviction processes through litigation for as long as possible so that we may save up enough to move.

It seems like a bad thing to do, but it’s no worse than what these lenders like MB Financial, Lincoln Financial and Village Officials and Legislators have done or allowed to happen to the residents here for a very long time.

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It should give everyone in Glenview great pause to consider that despite notifying every congressman, senator, village official, regulative agency and anyone else about the abhorrent and dangerous conditions in our community that several years later and in some instances, decades later, things have not improved.

It’s even more disheartening that some of the officials contacted numerous times that have done absolutely nothing still bill themselves as advocates for working families? Senator Dick Durbin responds with form letters addressing causes and issues completely unrelated to the plight of the residents here.

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Robert Dold had an intern call and pledge to do something, to date they’ve done nothing. Mark Kirk, where are you? Daniel Biss while extremely communicative and assuring wasn’t able to do anything. Governor Pat Quinn completely absent, Lisa Madigan, Anita Alverez, Toni Preckwinkle, the list goes on and on.

You assume because they are so far removed from their constituency that there would be a better response from local officials? Well, the response from Todd Hileman, and other village officials has been to tell us that they’re incapable of doing anything.

The first excuse was because the park is private property. The second excuse was because of the parks bankruptcy. That should scare the heck out of anyone in Glenview! Under those parameters it means a person could open a restaurant or a nursing home in Glenview (which would be private property) and/or file a bankruptcy petition which would exclude them from having to comply with health, fire or safety rules, sanitation, licenses or anything else meant to ensure the general public’s well-being.

Our community has The village and others have known this since before the park went into receivership. Our water is irradiated and was often times polluted. This has been the case since slumlord owned the park and the village was well aware of this as well as the lack of working street lights, raw sewage running down the streets and numerous other hazards. They made precursory and feeble attempts at litigation meant more for public relations than to actually resolve the issues or protect the residents.  

For the last year we have been blessed with the humanitarian stewardship of Steven Spinell/Kinzie Group. Perhaps the self-described Mahatma Gandhi of court appointed property managers?

I mean after all, having to drink irradiated water means we save money on light bulbs and have little need for streetlights? Having potholes so deep allows us to order authentic Chinese food by merely shouting down into the holes? I guess it’s all a matter of perception? Raw sewage running down the streets? Abundant mineral springs! Stray cats and dogs, skunks and raccoon infestations? Why that’s “nature at your back door!” Dead and dying trees waiting to fall on your house? Natural Forest Conservancy!

The sad truth of the matter is that it costs us nearly $2000 a month to live here. For many of us, that represents a large portion of our incomes. And besides raising our lot rents by nearly $300 after the bankruptcy, the ancillary costs of living here like buying bottled water and repairing tires have and continue to rise and price a lot of us right out of here every month.

If you ever wanted to see the effectiveness of the myriad of departments, groups, and bureaucracies your ever-increasing tax dollars pay for in Illinois, take a trip through Sunset Village.

I guess what we really need are more consumer protection departments and regulations (and of course, tax increases) to go along with the thousands we already have that don’t enforce anything? But that's up to you now. I am leaving Vice City and the best view of Sunset Village will be from my rearview mirror.

- Chris Iosello
Sunset Village Resident

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