Chicago will have one unified system for the homeless and migrants: civil servants

The city and state are in the planning stages Combine Chicago’s old homeless shelter system with its system for immigrants, state officials say, and turn it into one uniform shelter structure, an idea that homeless advocates have long championed.

The One System Initiative will shift “permanent shelter management to the nonprofit workforce,” Daisy Contreras, spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Human Services, said in a statement. Currently the city contracts with Favorite Healthcare Professionals, whose significant overtime has contributed to tens of millions of dollars in city payments to the firm that staffs city services. migrant shelters.

The state Office of Preventing and Ending Homelessness will lead the initiative, with more than 25 community organizations participating, Contreras said. Planning sessions begin in late April and last throughout the spring.

Beatriz Ponce de Leon, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said officials eventually hope to fully transition to a unified shelter system — looking beyond shelter to affordable housing.

The goal, she said, is “to serve people, whether they have been here five days, five years or their entire lives.”

Homeless advocates say combining the shelter systems will take time and coordination, but will be helpful.

The two shelter systems—serving Chicago’s homeless and migrant populations, respectively—are currently operating fighting for limited affordable housingsaid Nicole Bahena, vice president of community partnerships for All Chicago, in a written statement to the Tribune.

“Consolidating will help reduce competition and reduce wasted time and effort,” Bahena said.

The city opened its first migrant shelters in early September 2022, after Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott began sending migrants to Chicago and other sanctuary cities on buses and planes. to draw attention to the scarce resources in border towns. But Chicago’s open-armed approach to welcoming migrants quickly bumped up against the reality of limited resources and previous disinvestments in urban neighborhoods.

The city and state are now housing 8,724 migrants in 17 buildings, according to city data released Sunday. Nearly 40,000 migrants have passed through Chicago since Abbott’s bus service began more are added every week.

Bahena said the separate system set up for migrants is different from those typically used in the homeless sector. Providers helping asylum seekers may be new to housing and homelessness. According to her, combining these program models can pose challenges.

“This will require new staff positions, including system coordinators, translators and other staff, to support a coordinated system that must be adaptable as we learn,” she said in the statement.

Ponce de Leon said the plan is still in its early stages, but they hope to have a more public report by the end of the summer. She said the state’s top homelessness official and the the city’s new homelessness officer are involved in the discussions.

Sam Paler-Ponce, interim deputy director of policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said combining the systems is a “step in the right direction.” The biggest benefit, he said, is that asylum seekers will have a wider range of support services available to them: employment, food and health care.

But combining the systems could also lead to an “influx in demand for shelter beds,” he said.

According to recent data from the organization, more than 68,000 people are currently homeless in Chicago. Nearly 37,000 people had access to homeless services year-round. These figures do not include migrants.

Just as the city has faces budget concerns and shelters close, volunteers and immigrant advocates expect to see an increase in street homelessness and people “doubling down” or sharing a home with others due to economic hardship or a similar reason.

They say the solution lies in providing “wraparound” services and affordable housing, rather than increasing shelter capacity.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has already closed more than a dozen shelters since the height of shelter operations in mid-January. He also imposed 60 day limits for migrants staying in reception centres, with case-by-case exceptions for people with medical conditions, pregnant women and families with children, among others.

The number of deportations from shelters has been slow when they started in mid-March, but has recently increased, with 51 people leaving the system on Saturday. A total of 270 people had left the system by Sunday, and that number is likely to rise until the end of April.

There are several important demographic differences between migrants staying in shelters and Chicagoans experiencing homelessness, said Jenn Torres, a mutual aid volunteer who has helped migrants in the city.

Torres said asylum seekers who have traveled thousands of miles to reach Chicago, for example, have specific mental health needs, and there are many more families.

The Chicago Public Schools system is federally required to support the enrollment and education of students who are homeless or in transitional housing situations. This number has increased significantly over the past year, providing a picture of the number of migrant children dependent on city services.

By the end of March, there were 225,250 students enrolled in transitional living situations — a 48% increase from March of last year, and more than ever recorded this time of year, according to data from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Torres worries about the ability of Chicago’s homeless shelter system to meet the needs of migrants. To make matters even more difficult, most asylum seekers cannot work legally.

“We have a broken shelter system to begin with,” she said. “But (migrants) can’t pay the rent and they have children.”

She and other volunteers are already preparing for a time when, like last summer, there could be migrants camped out in the lobbies of police stations throughout the city.

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