Children Services relocating teen moms because of roaches
Tim Doulin and Bill Bush, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 14, 2006, News pg. 3C.
Bopha Ban gently lifted the radio off the end table, sending about a dozen roaches scurrying for cover behind a couch.
"They are everywhere," the 18-year-old single mother of Orlana, 2, and Breonna, 1, said as she showed her apartment to a reporter Thursday.
A roach infestation is an unpleasant experience for any resident, but John Saros said it is "unacceptable" for Ban and other young mothers who are in the care of Franklin County Children Services.
"We're moving the girls out today," Saros, the agency's executive director, said yesterday.
Children Services has paid up to $2,670 a month to rent seven units at an apartment building at 44 Sturbridge Rd., north of W. Broad Street, for six teenage mothers and their children.
The mothers are in a transitional program between being in foster care and learning to live on their own. The seventh unit at the complex, Hanover Ridge on the Far West Side, is used as an office for an on-site caseworker who's available to help the girls.
"When I first moved here, I swept some dead roaches up, but I didn't know it was going to be this bad," said Ban, who had lived with a Newark foster family before moving to Hanover Ridge in June.
"They come spray, but (the roaches) don't go away," Ban said.
The bugs have crawled on Orlana's face and Breonna picked up one. "I'm just scared one is going to go in my kid's ear," she said.
Saros said Children Services has been working with the management at the apartment complex for six months.
"We've had Orkin out there every month," he said, but the problem remains.
"It's unacceptable," he said. "We're going to get it fixed."
He said the girls would be moved in with relatives or foster families.
Hanover Ridge is the only apartment building in the transitional program. The others are houses.
Earlier this week, The Dispatch called the management of the apartment complex. But when asked to talk about the roaches, a woman said she had no comment and hung up.
Naomi Carr, 17, was happy to hear that Children Services was finding another place for her to live.
"They should," said Carr, who lives in one of the program's apartments with her 5-month-old son, Ty-Quan Tillman. "Why would you move some kids in here with babies when you know you have had a roach problem for the longest?"
Carr said she and her son have been living in the apartment for only a couple of weeks but have had daily encounters with the roaches.
"Just a couple of days ago, my son got bit by a roach on his forehead," Carr said. "One night, I was laying on the couch and a roach was crawling on me. It just freaked me out."
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