Lehigh Valley man lives in a cemetery. Now he’s facing eviction.

Confined to a hospital bed due to an accident, Jim Racht is facing eviction from an apartment he began renting in late 2022.

Racht uses oxygen 24 hours a day. He takes liquid nourishment because swallowing solid food causes pain. He wears an alert button around his neck in case of emergency.

Both his accident and housing predicament directly involve Easton Cemetery , which hired him part time in late 2022 for seasonal work — mowing grass — on the nearly 90-acre burial site in the city’s West Ward.

In spring 2023, while mowing some of the cemetery’s lawn, the commercial vehicle Racht was riding flipped over, severely injuring his back and neck. With previous medical disabilities, he has remained bedridden for months.

“I hope to get fitted for a specialized wheelchair,” he said, adding he can’t sit in a regular wheelchair because of his injuries. “They are trying to get me out of this bed; staying like this 24/7 is not doing any good for bed wounds.”

His landlord, the cemetery, doesn’t want to be cold-hearted, but it’s struggling, too.

“My job is to support the viability of a hurting cemetery,” said Marshall Wolff, the cemetery’s board president.

Wolff said the board of the nonprofit cemetery organization recently voted to take back Racht’s first-floor apartment for storage and an office where staff can gather with visitors or prospective customers.

“We don’t want to lose Jimmy’s rent,” he said, “but we need the space in order to provide an environment where people can talk about planning for loved ones. And Jimmy has nothing to do with that.”

This is a story about how both sides are struggling: one man with his health, one organization that manages a historic site with its finances.

Neither side is looking for publicity, but both sides agreed that a story could help bring awareness to each other’s plight.

Jim Racht talks about his injuries as he lies in a medical bed Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Easton. Racht worked as a groundskeeper at Easton Cemetery, where he was severely injured on the job last year and left bedridden. He also rents his apartment from the cemetery, which has told him he must vacate by Oct. 1, as officials want to use the apartment for storage and other things. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

The renter’s side

Racht, 67, said he has been on disability since around 2000, when he contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves. It can cause weakness, numbness or paralysis.

He was renting an apartment on Easton’s South Side when he learned about a rental at Easton Cemetery. About the same time, he said, the then-superintendent offered him part-time work maintaining the lawn.

About four weeks into the job, he was cutting grass on a Saturday in May 2023 when the commercial mower flipped and wound up crushing Racht. He said he spent several months in hospitals and nursing homes before he arranged to have a hospital bed and medical equipment brought to his apartment around mid-December.

Friends and nursing aides stop by to tend to his needs. Members of his church recently installed a temporary ramp from the porch for when he can leave the apartment for future medical procedures.

Racht doesn’t want to find a new home; he said his apartment is in a good neighborhood, and his $1,100-a-month rent is affordable with his $2,000 in monthly Social Security.

“It took me months to find a place when I had two good legs,” Racht said. “It’s got to be a first-floor [apartment] in a safe area.

“I’m just upset because I have a hard time understanding that a group of people sat in a room and made the decision because they want to use it for storage and maybe have a meeting here and there. They all know the person in here is trying to get his life back through therapy.”

The cemetery’s side

Wolff does not dispute Racht’s story. Unlike in many landlord-tenant disputes, Racht is current with his rent and has been a model tenant, the board president said.

But early this month he let Racht know the cemetery plans to terminate his lease Oct. 1, first verbally, then with a written notice Aug. 5 that he hand-delivered.

“Nothing is sacred about Oct. 1,” said Wolff, adding the cemetery would work with Racht on finding new shelter. But he did not give any specifics.

He also declined to provide details about the cemetery’s finances. But its most recent IRS filing offers a glimpse. The document shows net assets of $810,230 for the tax year ending May 31, 2023, compared with $983,379 the previous year. Expenses, which were $438,459 for the 2021-22 tax year, dipped to $426,135 in the most recent period.

Graveyards continue to struggle financially as people buy fewer burial plots, leaving operators with less revenue for care and other expenses. The 175-year-old Easton Cemetery is no exception.

The cemetery board and a friends group have been trying to revitalize the historic cemetery and its role with the city, with public events and plans to highlight its past for the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. The 86-acre cemetery, the largest green space in the city, according to Wolff, is the final resting place of many notable Eastonians, including George Taylor, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Many people think the cemetery is run by the city and, by extension, gets taxpayer help with its operations and upkeep, Wolff said. But it’s not. When the cemetery had to remove dozens of trees damaged by storms, it accepted free help in 2022 from more than a half-dozen contractors. A fire in January destroyed a storage building.

A merger in 2019 with neighboring Easton Heights Cemetery offered potential for additional revenue. But it has also left the board with a building the group would like to sell but cannot yet, because, according to Wolff, it has to be subdivided and rezoned as a private residence, and it also needs extensive repairs.

For each step forward, it’s been two steps back for the cemetery, Wolff said.

“The flip side that scares me is I need people to understand we are doing our best to stabilize what we are doing,” he said.

Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone can be reached at asalamone@mcall.com.