logo
#

Latest news with #OneSystemInitiative

Housing funding cut in Illinois budget as homelessness increases
Housing funding cut in Illinois budget as homelessness increases

Yahoo

time05-07-2025

  • Business
  • Yahoo

Housing funding cut in Illinois budget as homelessness increases

The number of homeless people in Illinois is rising, but the state's spending on homeless prevention and other housing programs is headed in the other direction. Facing a tight budget year with constrained spending and limited natural revenue growth, the $55.1 billion fiscal year 2026 budget that took effect July 1 reduces total funding for housing programs by more than $14 million, including Pritzker's signature initiative designed to eliminate homelessness in Illinois. 'Last year homelessness increased 116% in the state of Illinois,' Doug Kenshol, co-founder of the Illinois Shelter Alliance, told Capitol News Illinois. 'To be in the midst of this crisis and then have the state cut funding was beyond disappointing.' Discretionary spending rose by less than 1% in the FY26 budget, according to the governor's office, despite total spending increasing by $2 billion. That minimal spending growth led lawmakers to reduce several programs. 'Is it enough? No, it isn't … we know that homelessness is an existential crisis, and the state of Illinois takes this seriously,' Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Buffalo Grove, who serves on a state homeless prevention task force, told Capitol News Illinois. 'We have a really bold vision for ending homelessness and we're going to continue down that path.' Pritzker first established a task force by executive order in 2021 that would create a plan for 'Home Illinois' to reduce homelessness in the state to 'functional zero' — where homelessness is temporary and people without housing can quickly obtain housing resources. The executive order did not set a date for the state to reach functional zero, and funding for the Home Illinois is declining by $26.6 million in FY26. Pritzker's administration had previously targeted housing programs for substantial increases in recent years. The FY26 budget appropriated $263.7 million for Home Illinois, down from $290.3 million in FY25. That was a $90 million increase from FY24, when the program received $200.3 million in its first year after Pritzker signed legislation in 2023 codifying the task force and Home Illinois program. Among the decreased spending in Home Illinois is a $25 million reduction to the Court-Based Rental Assistance Program that provides financial aid to people facing evictions. Other programs saw steady or increased funding, including shelters, which rose to fund Chicago's One System Initiative that integrates migrants into the city's typical shelter system. Spending on housing programs is also down overall, according to the advocacy group Housing Action Illinois. While some housing programs saw increases that offset reductions to Home Illinois, total spending on housing programs is down by $14.6 million in the FY26 budget, to $354 million. Pritzker's proposed budget had called for a $7.6 million decrease. 'FY26 is largely a maintenance year for the state budget,' an Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson said in a statement. 'We remain as committed as ever to advancing strategies that prevent and end homelessness across Illinois.' Johnson said the spending reduction is 'temporary' and the state is still working toward long-term goals that would require more funding. 'The state is trying to do the best it can with limited resources,' Housing Action Illinois Policy Director Bob Palmer said in an interview. Some of the avenues lawmakers used to fund programs also divert funding away from one area in favor of another, Palmer said. For example, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is supposed to provide funding for new permanent rental housing, but money in the fund is also being used to increase funding for emergency or transitional housing. 'We were in a way glad to see that increase but also feeling conflicted because it's taking money from another important housing resource,' Palmer said. 'We had been advocating for that increase to come from general revenue funds.' Funding for the emergency and transitional housing program increased by $7 million, a small win for advocates, but nowhere near the $40 million increase sought by the Illinois Shelter Alliance. The group wanted lawmakers to increase funding by $100 million overall for housing programs. Palmer also worried proposed federal cuts to rental assistance programs will put additional strain on the state's budget. The spending reductions come as homelessness in Illinois continues to rise despite the new program. The latest data on homelessness in Illinois from an October report by a Department of Human Services task force shows the state had 25,787 unhoused people on the night of the annual 'point in time' count in January 2024 — a 116% increase from 2023. The increase is largely driven by migrants who have been sent to Illinois by other states such as Texas. Of those without housing in January 2024, 13,891 were new arrivals. However, non-migrant homelessness is still on the rise, increasing 22% in 2024. Homelessness is also increasing throughout the state. It's up 207% since 2020 in Chicago, while DuPage and St. Clair counties were the only places in Illinois to see a decline over that time. 'You can argue that we can always do better, but Illinois is on the right path,' Johnson said. Despite homelessness increasing since Home Illinois was established, Kenshol said the program is making a difference. 'They've created some great programs and they've gotten funds distributed and a lot of housing and a lot of shelter has been created, but we have to sustain that effort and we need to keep making incremental increases because we're not there yet,' he said. Data backs that up, according to IDHS. The Court-Based Rental Assistance Program, which received a substantial cut this year, has helped 7,500 households. And more than 18,000 people were served by Home Illinois in the first half of FY25 — 10,000 more than IDHS' prior homelessness prevention program helped in FY22. The problem, according to advocates and IDHS, is rapidly growing housing costs that make finding permanent housing and affording rent more unreachable for more people. A report last month from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute found Illinois needs 142,000 more housing units to meet the current demand for homes. Data in the task force's annual report that provides a road map for Home Illinois shows service providers still need substantial resources to make a dent in homelessness. The state has more than 23,000 beds and housing units for homeless people, but needs about 27,000 more. The task force, which includes advocates, lawmakers and top leaders in state agencies, says the problem will continue to grow if these resources aren't addressed. 'The longer it takes to meet these targets, the more resources will be needed to reach functional zero as homelessness is a dynamic systems problem, or, in other words, annual unmet need for shelter and housing can be expected to increase each year that the need is unmet,' the report said. Palmer agreed. 'If we're taking the plan to prevent and end homelessness in Illinois seriously, we need to be providing the increased resources to eliminate that shortage … otherwise we're just managing homelessness at its current level,' he said. Palmer said lawmakers should be increasing funding for housing no matter what the state's budget situation is because housing insecurity can be a root cause for other issues that cost the state more money, such as health problems. Increasing funding for shelters alone also isn't enough, said Kenshol, the Shelter Aliance co-founder. A lack of funding for affordable permanent housing leaves people stuck in the shelter system, which means growing rental assistance programs to help prevent people from being forced into shelters should be a budget priority, he said. In a $55.1 billion budget, Kenshol argued the state should be able to find the money to increase funding each year for housing programs. 'As a society, as voters, as elected officials, we make different choices. We turn our backs on the people who are desperate and at risk of perishing and instead we invest in other things,' Kenshol said. 'My values suggest that we should put caring for the least of these first.' Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months
Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months

Yahoo

time21-06-2025

  • Politics
  • Yahoo

Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months

A Kenwood shelter housing both migrants and Chicagoans experiencing homelessness will close in the coming months following a divide amongst neighbors, according to an email update from state Sen. Robert Peters. Located at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, the shelter opened in summer 2023 to accommodate migrants sent to Chicago by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Its opening drew sharp pushback from residents concerned about how newcomers from crisis-affected regions would integrate into the neighborhood. Tensions deepened when the facility was expanded in late December 2024 to include homeless Chicagoans, part of the city and state's One System Initiative aimed at merging shelter services for both populations. According to the state, the shelter currently holds 94 families and over 330 individuals. Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges Peters said he was notified of the closure by city and Illinois Department of Human Services officials at 3:15 p.m. Friday. Those currently housed at the shelter will move to new facilities over the next three to six months, he said. The state directed questions regarding the future plans and timelines for the shelter to the city, but Chicago officials didn't immediately provide comment Friday afternoon regarding the reason for the closure. 'We've always believed that housing is a human right,' Peters said. 'But also, at the end of the day, what matters most is being transparent with everybody.' As tens of thousands of people arrived by bus over roughly two years, the city and state scrambled to open enough shelters to stave off a full-blown homelessness crisis in Chicago. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. The idea of a combined system was championed by some who said it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. There are dozens of shelters in the new system. The closure announcement also comes as President Donald Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement in and around the city, targeting courts and offices where people are reporting for check-ins. Many of the migrants being housed by the city are from Venezuela, a country that Trump has repeatedly singled out in immigration policy.

Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months
Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months

Chicago Tribune

time20-06-2025

  • Politics
  • Chicago Tribune

Embattled Kenwood shelter housing migrants and homeless Chicagoans to close in coming months

A Kenwood shelter housing both migrants and Chicagoans experiencing homelessness will close in the coming months following a divide amongst neighbors, according to an email update from state Sen. Robert Peters. Located at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, the shelter opened in summer 2023 to accommodate migrants sent to Chicago by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Its opening drew sharp pushback from residents concerned about how newcomers from crisis-affected regions would integrate into the neighborhood. Tensions deepened when the facility was later expanded to include homeless Chicagoans, part of the city and state's One System Initiative aimed at merging shelter services for both populations. Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challengesPeters said he was notified of the closure by city and Illinois Department of Human Services officials at 3:15 p.m. Friday. Those currently housed at the shelter will move to new facilities over the next three to six months, he said. Neither the city nor the state was immediately able to provide a comment Friday afternoon regarding the reason for the closure or the number of people affected. 'We've always believed that housing is a human right,' Peters said. 'But also, at the end of the day, what matters most is being transparent with everybody.' As tens of thousands of people arrived by bus over roughly two years, the city and state scrambled to open enough shelters to stave off a full-blown homelessness crisis in Chicago. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. The idea of a combined system was championed by some who said it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. There are dozens of shelters in the new system. The closure announcement also comes as President Donald Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement in and around the city, targeting courts and offices where people are reporting for check-ins. Many of the migrants being housed by the city are from Venezuela, a country that Trump has repeatedly singled out in immigration policy.

Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges
Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges

Yahoo

time02-05-2025

  • Politics
  • Yahoo

Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges

When a converted Kenwood hotel opened its doors to migrants in the summer of 2023, officials who announced the news received vociferous pushback from residents. They had numerous concerns about the shelter at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive: whether migrants would be vaccinated and fingerprinted; how their children would be educated; the food they would eat. And many wanted to know what Chicago was doing for the large and growing homeless population that predated the migrants' arrival. Almost three years later, buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have stopped arriving from the more closely surveilled southern border. The city has closed down most of the facilities it scrambled to stand up to meet waves of asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela. Thousands have transitioned to permanent housing. Police stations, once overflowing with newly arrived people, are empty. What remains is a new, merged shelter network officials have dubbed the One System Initiative,which houses anyone, from anywhere, who doesn't have a place to go. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. They have collaborated with nonprofits to run 50 total sites across the system, city officials said. Homeless advocates have long championed the idea of a combined system, saying it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. The first few months under the new system brought changes those advocates hailed as triumphs, including the opening of a new no-barrier emergency shelter on the Lower West Side that works as a gateway to the social service network for anyone. Challenges remain. The number of people who need a short-term place to sleep still exceeds the 7,400 beds available in the merged systems. Some facilities are still dealing with bilingual staff shortages. Even if Chicago's emergency shelters were perfectly equipped to meet demand, advocates say that issues with homelessness will persist unless the city addresses its inadequate supply of affordable housing. And in Kenwood, some residents are pushing back and may take legal action to try to prevent a shelter that once opened for migrants from becoming a permanent fixture in their area. Inside the shelters, residents and workers say there is empathy among the people staying there. 'Some come because their house burned down, others because they just arrived in the U.S. and have nowhere else to go, some are fleeing violence from places like Mexico, Venezuela, or Haiti,' said Marcos Sanchez, a Venezuelan migrant who now works at a state-funded shelter near Midway Airport. 'People support each other emotionally.' The first waves of arriving migrants set off a swirl of activity across the city in August 2022. As arrivals picked up, thousands of volunteers organized to help people get on their feet and the city and state hurried to find shelter for the asylum-seekers, who at one point were arriving by the hundreds. Kenwood wasn't the only neighborhood to see heated arguments about shelters: Woodlawn on the South Side, Galewood on the Northwest Side and Pilsen, a hub for Chicago's Mexican-American community, also became centers of intense debate about whether and how migrants should stay there. Joy Cobbs remembered that while many residents were unhappy about plans to put migrants in hotel buildings in the 4900 block of DuSable Lake Shore Drive — surrounded by high-rise condominiums and townhouses — she and others thought the neighborhood needed to do its part with what city leaders described as a rapid response to a national emergency. 'There was an understanding in the community that this was an emergency situation and it was going to be for a limited time,' she said. 'We did pitch in with blanket drives and toy drives.' Cobbs, 53, and some of her neighbors came to find the activities around the shelter 'extremely disruptive.' They cited large gatherings in nearby parks, litter, outdoor cooking, crime, smoking and drug use among their concerns. 'People can try to make us feel a certain way, say we're intolerant,' Cobbs said. 'We gave literally close to two years of tolerance.' Cobbs is one of a group of residents who have organized Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community, which is trying to prevent the shelter from continuing to operate past July, when the city will take it over from the state. The group, led by a seven-person organizing committee, has gotten about 1,200 signatures on a petition asking legislators to oppose the shelter. State Rep. Curtis Tarver, who represents part of the south lakefront in the Illinois House, wrote a letter to the state and the city in late March, decrying the decision to keep the shelter open, its planned capacity of 750 people and the way the decision was communicated to residents. State Sen. Robert Peters agrees: '750 seems pretty large.' But the Chicago Democrat said he is compelled to support the shelter. 'Hyde Park is about embracing people,' he said. 'It has always been about embracing people.' Ginni Cook shares that conviction. Cook, 83, lives a few blocks from the site and said she'd heard her neighbors' objections but felt that 'we can't keep saying, 'not here, not here.'' 'We've got to do what we can,' she said. 'What if that were me?' She thought the facility should house fewer people for the sake of safety and privacy for those living there, and supported the idea of security measures for their protection. Peters wrote to the city and state late last month asking that the shelter's capacity be capped at 450 people, with a promise not to expand into adjacent buildings. He requested that security cameras be installed at the mouth of the parking lot, increased sanitation service and stepped-up communication between officials and the neighborhood about how the facility is operating. By mid-April, 414 people were staying at the shelter, according to the city. Peters, who visited the facility April 15, said most of the people staying there are children. Officials have since acknowledged the letter and been 'responsive' to his inquiries about operations and data, Peters said. Reached for comment, city officials acknowledged that Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, reported a 'lack of clarity' about long-term plans for the site and pointed to an update meeting held for residents in February. Though the city said the meeting was meant to 'reaffirm their commitment to supporting both shelter residents and the broader community,' members of Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community said the meeting felt like a lecture and were caught completely off guard by its outcome. A flyer has begun to circulate in at least one of the neighborhood's apartment buildings asking residents to help raise money for a legal challenge to the shelter. 'We must fight to maintain our property value, quality of life, and integrity of our neighborhood,' the flyer reads. 'If we don't, we will surely forget it.' The flyer appears to seek about $7,500. An online fundraiser had raised just over $5,000 as of last week. City officials hired several controversial out-of-state contractors — Favorite Healthcare Staffing and GardaWorld Federal Services — to respond to hundreds of migrants arriving in Chicago daily. But Andre Gordillo, whose nonprofit New Life Centers runs two of the shelters as part of its social service network on the South and West sides, said groups like Favorite have 'packed their bags.' These days, Gordillo, who leads New Life's 'New Vecinos' program, said the two state-funded shelters they help operate in Kenwood and in West Lawn are far less busy than when hundreds of people were arriving every day on buses. At the peak of the crisis, 189 migrants a day needed shelter in addition to the existing needs of Chicagoans, according to the city. Now, everyone who stays in a shelter is enrolled in the city's housing waitlist, known as the Coordinated Entry System, but officials no longer differentiate between individuals who have migrated and those who were born in the U.S. As of March, city officials said there were 128 combined — migrant and nonmigrant — requests for shelter a day. About 75% of the people at the shelters New Life runs are migrants, Gordillo said; the rest are a wide range of nationalities from Haitians to Russians. New Life is adjusting its support resources inside the shelter. 'There's been a bit of a learning curve to serving their different needs and wants,' Gordillo said. 'For example … instead of English classes, we've added Spanish classes.' The city's Department of Family and Support Services said in a statement to the Tribune that the initiative to combine the two systems is 'an ongoing process' and that 'while it is going well, there are occasional issues to work through,' such as challenges in hiring and retaining qualified staff and limited funding. Shelter workers are required to take classes on trauma-informed case management and immigration basics, according to the city. DFSS spokeswoman Linsey Maughan said 966 staff at 47 agencies have completed one or more trainings as of April 18. The shelters haven't been the target of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security, Gordillo said, but both migrants and no-migrants have been invited to Know Your Rights trainings in case. 'We've passed around videos and communication,' he said. 'If there's a raid, there are steps to follow. There are people to call.' Gordillo said that when a family needs a shelter placement, they can usually get it within the day. For single people without a place to go, Sam Paler-Ponce, associate director of city policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said 'there is still huge demand' that outstrips the availability of beds. City officials said family homelessness was more prevalent in the migrant population, and as buses from the border decline, single adult rates are rising. Late last month, Maughan said that a shelter near Midway Airport, housing over 500 families, would reorient to serve single adults 'over the coming months' to help address that demand. 'We're all experiencing similar uncertainty' Nikita Thomas said she wasn't expecting to hear Spanish at mealtimes or in the elevator to her room when she and her 6-year-old son arrived at the converted West Lawn hotel near Midway several weeks ago. Thomas, 36, said she and her son Nakari stayed at several temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness in Indiana before they moved into the converted hotel. There, they became neighbors with the last of the tens of thousands of migrants who were bused to Chicago. Thomas and her son live on a different floor from the asylum-seekers, but they eat meals together, she said. They use Google Translate to communicate. 'I ask them about things that I need, regular things at the shelter,' Thomas said. 'But they don't speak English, so we translate on our phones. They're really nice.' Nearby, Maria Muñoz, a 39-year-old woman from Venezuela's northern mountainous region, expressed gratitude for the social workers at the shelter who have provided mental health support and helped her son enroll in school. 'We're all experiencing similar uncertainty. Tomorrow, anything could happen,' she said. Sanchez, the migrant who now works at the facility near Midway, said 'the shelter still functions the same' no matter who is living there. Sanchez worked in human resources for a firm and taught music at a school in his home city of Maracaibo, Venezuela. He said he left his home country with his wife and 8-year-old son because its schools and hospitals were crumbling, and he stayed at a shelter himself before joining New Life as an employee. Everyone staying at the shelter where he works comes with a 'different type of trauma,' he said, but they've bonded. 'It's impressive to see how everyone interacts using signs and sounds to communicate,' he said. 'I feel there's a lot of resilience. That ability to bounce back no matter the trauma.' Cobbs, the East Hyde Park resident who opposes the area shelter's long-term operation, wanted to know why the city and state were spending millions on emergency shelters when 'the solution for homelessness is affordable housing.' 'This is a lot of money supporting something that could be going toward permanently housing people, where they have resources and kitchens to cook,' she said. While Mayor Brandon Johnson is floating ideas to boost the city's supply of affordable housing, advocates warn that the city is on track to lose at least 845 units of subsidized housing this year. And at the federal level, cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development could put the city, which has seen a steady increase in its homeless population, even further back on its heels in replenishing its affordable housing stock. Paler-Ponce, of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said all those dynamics made for a 'huge uphill battle' to reduce homelessness for migrants and nonmigrants in and around Chicago. The question, he said, is 'what's next beyond shelter. … It's a serious need, especially in extreme weather, to get people under a roof, but it's certainly not a permanent solution.' Maughan said no cuts had been announced that would affect DFSS and other agencies it runs, but that the city was 'actively monitoring' federal decisions that could impact funding.

Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges
Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges

Chicago Tribune

time02-05-2025

  • Politics
  • Chicago Tribune

Early months of combined migrant, homeless shelters in Chicago see success, structural challenges

When a converted Kenwood hotel opened its doors to migrants in the summer of 2023, officials who announced the news received vociferous pushback from residents. They had numerous concerns about the shelter at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive: whether migrants would be vaccinated and fingerprinted; how their children would be educated; the food they would eat. And many wanted to know what Chicago was doing for the large and growing homeless population that predated the migrants' arrival. Almost three years later, buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have stopped arriving from the more closely surveilled southern border. The city has closed down most of the facilities it scrambled to stand up to meet waves of asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela. Thousands have transitioned to permanent housing. Police stations, once overflowing with newly arrived people, are empty. What remains is a new, merged shelter network officials have dubbed the One System Initiative, which houses anyone, from anywhere, who doesn't have a place to go. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. They have collaborated with nonprofits to run 50 total sites across the system, city officials said. Homeless advocates have long championed the idea of a combined system, saying it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. The first few months under the new system brought changes those advocates hailed as triumphs, including the opening of a new no-barrier emergency shelter on the Lower West Side that works as a gateway to the social service network for anyone. Challenges remain. The number of people who need a short-term place to sleep still exceeds the 7,400 beds available in the merged systems. Some facilities are still dealing with bilingual staff shortages. Even if Chicago's emergency shelters were perfectly equipped to meet demand, advocates say that issues with homelessness will persist unless the city addresses its inadequate supply of affordable housing. And in Kenwood, some residents are pushing back and may take legal action to try to prevent a shelter that once opened for migrants from becoming a permanent fixture in their area. Inside the shelters, residents and workers say there is empathy among the people staying there. 'Some come because their house burned down, others because they just arrived in the U.S. and have nowhere else to go, some are fleeing violence from places like Mexico, Venezuela, or Haiti,' said Marcos Sanchez, a Venezuelan migrant who now works at a state-funded shelter near Midway Airport. 'People support each other emotionally.' Kenwood neighborhood divide The first waves of arriving migrants set off a swirl of activity across the city in August 2022. As arrivals picked up, thousands of volunteers organized to help people get on their feet and the city and state hurried to find shelter for the asylum-seekers, who at one point were arriving by the hundreds. Kenwood wasn't the only neighborhood to see heated arguments about shelters: Woodlawn on the South Side, Galewood on the Northwest Side and Pilsen, a hub for Chicago's Mexican-American community, also became centers of intense debate about whether and how migrants should stay there. Joy Cobbs remembered that while many residents were unhappy about plans to put migrants in hotel buildings in the 4900 block of DuSable Lake Shore Drive — surrounded by high-rise condominiums and townhouses — she and others thought the neighborhood needed to do its part with what city leaders described as a rapid response to a national emergency. 'There was an understanding in the community that this was an emergency situation and it was going to be for a limited time,' she said. 'We did pitch in with blanket drives and toy drives.' Cobbs, 53, and some of her neighbors came to find the activities around the shelter 'extremely disruptive.' They cited large gatherings in nearby parks, litter, outdoor cooking, crime, smoking and drug use among their concerns. 'People can try to make us feel a certain way, say we're intolerant,' Cobbs said. 'We gave literally close to two years of tolerance.' Cobbs is one of a group of residents who have organized Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community, which is trying to prevent the shelter from continuing to operate past July, when the city will take it over from the state. The group, led by a seven-person organizing committee, has gotten about 1,200 signatures on a petition asking legislators to oppose the shelter. State Rep. Curtis Tarver, who represents part of the south lakefront in the Illinois House, wrote a letter to the state and the city in late March, decrying the decision to keep the shelter open, its planned capacity of 750 people and the way the decision was communicated to residents. State Sen. Robert Peters agrees: '750 seems pretty large.' But the Chicago Democrat said he is compelled to support the shelter. 'Hyde Park is about embracing people,' he said. 'It has always been about embracing people.' Ginni Cook shares that conviction. Cook, 83, lives a few blocks from the site and said she'd heard her neighbors' objections but felt that 'we can't keep saying, 'not here, not here.'' 'We've got to do what we can,' she said. 'What if that were me?' She thought the facility should house fewer people for the sake of safety and privacy for those living there, and supported the idea of security measures for their protection. Peters wrote to the city and state late last month asking that the shelter's capacity be capped at 450 people, with a promise not to expand into adjacent buildings. He requested that security cameras be installed at the mouth of the parking lot, increased sanitation service and stepped-up communication between officials and the neighborhood about how the facility is operating. By mid-April, 414 people were staying at the shelter, according to the city. Peters, who visited the facility April 15, said most of the people staying there are children. Officials have since acknowledged the letter and been 'responsive' to his inquiries about operations and data, Peters said. Reached for comment, city officials acknowledged that Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, reported a 'lack of clarity' about long-term plans for the site and pointed to an update meeting held for residents in February. Though the city said the meeting was meant to 'reaffirm their commitment to supporting both shelter residents and the broader community,' members of Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community said the meeting felt like a lecture and were caught completely off guard by its outcome. A flyer has begun to circulate in at least one of the neighborhood's apartment buildings asking residents to help raise money for a legal challenge to the shelter. 'We must fight to maintain our property value, quality of life, and integrity of our neighborhood,' the flyer reads. 'If we don't, we will surely forget it.' The flyer appears to seek about $7,500. An online fundraiser had raised just over $5,000 as of last week. A learning curve City officials hired several controversial out-of-state contractors — Favorite Healthcare Staffing and GardaWorld Federal Services — to respond to hundreds of migrants arriving in Chicago daily. But Andre Gordillo, whose nonprofit New Life Centers runs two of the shelters as part of its social service network on the South and West sides, said groups like Favorite have 'packed their bags.' These days, Gordillo, who leads New Life's 'New Vecinos' program, said the two state-funded shelters they help operate in Kenwood and in West Lawn are far less busy than when hundreds of people were arriving every day on buses. At the peak of the crisis, 189 migrants a day needed shelter in addition to the existing needs of Chicagoans, according to the everyone who stays in a shelter is enrolled in the city's housing waitlist, known as the Coordinated Entry System, but officials no longer differentiate between individuals who have migrated and those who were born in the U.S. As of March, city officials said there were 128 combined — migrant and nonmigrant — requests for shelter a day. About 75% of the people at the shelters New Life runs are migrants, Gordillo said; the rest are a wide range of nationalities from Haitians to Russians. New Life is adjusting its support resources inside the shelter. 'There's been a bit of a learning curve to serving their different needs and wants,' Gordillo said. 'For example … instead of English classes, we've added Spanish classes.' The city's Department of Family and Support Services said in a statement to the Tribune that the initiative to combine the two systems is 'an ongoing process' and that 'while it is going well, there are occasional issues to work through,' such as challenges in hiring and retaining qualified staff and limited funding. Shelter workers are required to take classes on trauma-informed case management and immigration basics, according to the city. DFSS spokeswoman Linsey Maughan said 966 staff at 47 agencies have completed one or more trainings as of April 18. The shelters haven't been the target of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security, Gordillo said, but both migrants and no-migrants have been invited to Know Your Rights trainings in case. 'We've passed around videos and communication,' he said. 'If there's a raid, there are steps to follow. There are people to call.' Gordillo said that when a family needs a shelter placement, they can usually get it within the day. For single people without a place to go, Sam Paler-Ponce, associate director of city policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said 'there is still huge demand' that outstrips the availability of beds. City officials said family homelessness was more prevalent in the migrant population, and as buses from the border decline, single adult rates are rising. Late last month, Maughan said that a shelter near Midway Airport, housing over 500 families, would reorient to serve single adults 'over the coming months' to help address that demand. 'We're all experiencing similar uncertainty' Nikita Thomas said she wasn't expecting to hear Spanish at mealtimes or in the elevator to her room when she and her 6-year-old son arrived at the converted West Lawn hotel near Midway several weeks 36, said she and her son Nakari stayed at several temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness in Indiana before they moved into the converted hotel. There, they became neighbors with the last of the tens of thousands of migrants who were bused to Chicago. Thomas and her son live on a different floor from the asylum-seekers, but they eat meals together, she said. They use Google Translate to communicate.'I ask them about things that I need, regular things at the shelter,' Thomas said. 'But they don't speak English, so we translate on our phones. They're really nice.' Nearby, Maria Muñoz, a 39-year-old woman from Venezuela's northern mountainous region, expressed gratitude for the social workers at the shelter who have provided mental health support and helped her son enroll in school. 'We're all experiencing similar uncertainty. Tomorrow, anything could happen,' she said. Sanchez, the migrant who now works at the facility near Midway, said 'the shelter still functions the same' no matter who is living there. Sanchez worked in human resources for a firm and taught music at a school in his home city of Maracaibo, Venezuela. He said he left his home country with his wife and 8-year-old son because its schools and hospitals were crumbling, and he stayed at a shelter himself before joining New Life as an employee. Everyone staying at the shelter where he works comes with a 'different type of trauma,' he said, but they've bonded. 'It's impressive to see how everyone interacts using signs and sounds to communicate,' he said. 'I feel there's a lot of resilience. That ability to bounce back no matter the trauma.' Beyond shelter Cobbs, the East Hyde Park resident who opposes the area shelter's long-term operation, wanted to know why the city and state were spending millions on emergency shelters when 'the solution for homelessness is affordable housing.' 'This is a lot of money supporting something that could be going toward permanently housing people, where they have resources and kitchens to cook,' she said. While Mayor Brandon Johnson is floating ideas to boost the city's supply of affordable housing, advocates warn that the city is on track to lose at least 845 units of subsidized housing this year. And at the federal level, cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development could put the city, which has seen a steady increase in its homeless population, even further back on its heels in replenishing its affordable housing stock. Paler-Ponce, of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said all those dynamics made for a 'huge uphill battle' to reduce homelessness for migrants and nonmigrants in and around Chicago. The question, he said, is 'what's next beyond shelter. … It's a serious need, especially in extreme weather, to get people under a roof, but it's certainly not a permanent solution.' Maughan said no cuts had been announced that would affect DFSS and other agencies it runs, but that the city was 'actively monitoring' federal decisions that could impact funding.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store