Mayor Brandon Johnson
Chicago’s migrant population has swelled to 34,000 as Mayor Brandon Johnson holds closed door meetings with aldermen for input on a new strategy to address the crisis.
On Monday, January 22, Johnson met with 25 mayors of suburban towns to ask for help to house new arrivals.
The meetings reportedly came in response to rising costs of building new shelter space for migrants. Johnson said in Politico that the costs are “too high” and that the city has no money left to build new shelters. On January 19, Johnson held a series of meetings with small groups of aldermen.
At those meetings, Johnson reportedly told aldermen he will no longer build shelter space and industrial tents for the migrants.
The state has allocated an extra $160 million to help; Governor JB Pritzker said he is waiting on the city for a plan.
“The city has not told the state where they would like us to put our resources to build new shelters or help them build new shelters, so we can’t help if we can’t identify those locations,” Pritzker said.
To manage the migrant population, Johnson plans to work with churches and private individuals to find beds for migrants.
Johnson reportedly has a goal to get the migrants out of Chicago’s 28 shelters and into permanent housing by relying on the new case managers who are at each facility.
According to a January 19 document obtained by Politico, Johnson said of the 34,000 migrants that have arrived in Chicago since August 31, 2004, approximately 14,449 are living in shelters. About 5,000 are minors and 212 are at shelters at O’Hare Airport and four migrants remain at police stations.
A total of 608 buses carrying migrants have come to Chicago, including 501 that have arrived since last May, according to the document.
The document says for the week ending January 19, 1,105 migrants had been placed in temporary shelters and a total of 808 had left. Approximately 7,842 migrants were given 60-day notices after the deadline to move out had passed.
And the city was short about 216 beds for migrants. According to the documents, the city as of December 22, stopped adding shelter beds and will fill existing ones when migrants leave the shelters after the deadline had passed. The city has suspended issuing 60-vacate notices until February 1 due to the cold weather.
At one of the city’s shelters in Woodlawn, nearly 600 migrants were living at the Wadsworth Elementary School as of July 2023.
Kerwin Spratt has lived in Woodlawn 22 years. Wadsworth Elementary is right outside his back door. Spratt told the Crusader he’s grown weary of the migrant situation in his neighborhood.
“One night a lady resident came home and found a car parked in her spot. She asked a migrant to move their car and they busted out her windows and came into her house,” Spratt said.
“The city is pouring out resources towards non-citizens. But many of us can’t even pay our property taxes.”
The migrant crisis in Chicago and other major cities began in 2022, when Texas Governor Gregg Abbott grew frustrated with President Joe Biden, accusing his administration of not enforcing laws that protect the U.S. border.
