City and state officials sought to coordinate their response but that was hampered by infighting over resources and responsibilities.
to shelters, both for their disruption and strain on public resources, also continues to flare up. Yet the buses from the Texas border are still showing up almost daily.
From the beginning, Chicago officials have scrambled to house and feed arriving migrants while focusing on short-term measures. Tensions have also flared between city and state officials, despite efforts to coordinate a response that began before the first bus arrived. Both have blamed the federal government for insufficient funding and for not expediting permits so migrants can work legally.
Yet the city’s and state’s response has been marked by infighting over funding, resources and mutual responsibility. Last September, for instance, city Family and Support Services Commissioner Brandie Knazze texted Chief Operating Officer Paul Goodrich to express frustration during a meeting with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration: “I’m on the state call and they are pushing us to open more shelters.” She punctuated her message with five face-palm emojis.
Carrie McKillip of the University of Illinois Extension, who studies disaster preparedness in rural communities, said there’s a difference between a “people disaster” — where groups like the Salvation Army and Red Cross swoop in with well-established plans for immediate but temporary relief — and a “people crisis.”People board a CTA bus before being taken to a Salvation Army site after arriving on another bus with approximately 60 other migrants from Texas at Union Station in Chicago on Aug.
A group of people are given cheeseburgers from Ricky Medina, not pictured, while sitting on a CTA bus before being taken to a Salvation Army site after arriving on a bus with about 60 other migrants from Texas at Union Station in Chicago on Aug. 31, 2022. Last fall, when the first wave of buses arrived, Lightfoot officials worked with faith-based groups and nonprofits to help. They organized health screenings and worried about keeping the locations of migrant housing secret so they weren’t “overrun by press.”
As more buses rolled in over Labor Day weekend, the state stepped in to find hotel rooms to accommodate some of the arrivals, sparking criticism from the Republican mayor of west suburban Burr Ridge. Goodrich received a text on Sept. 7 telling him most migrants “do not stay long as they quickly find some family friends to move in with.” That hasn’t been the case in Chicago, where some migrants have remained in shelters for months, and many lack close connections in their new home.
“It says that we have defunded all of our structures of care, and we don’t have a sustainable way to take care of people in the city,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.With shelters quickly filling up, the city immediately turned to Favorite Staffing, a Kansas-based emergency staffing company whose revenue shot up to $1.3 billion after entering into contracts with hospitals and governments across the nation during the pandemic.
On Sept. 14, to expedite the state’s response and seek help from the federal government, Pritzker issued a state disaster proclamation — but, controversially, only applied it to migrants who arrived by bus from Texas. Transporting children to school also became an ongoing issue. Migrants repeatedly enrolled their children but couldn’t find a way to get there.
State officials offered some additional hotel sites they “would consider co-governing” with the city but encouraged Chicago officials to continue pursuing closed big-box stores as potential shelters. “This is insane,” the complaint said. “We can’t take their hand-offs plus a bus load of people. We need to talk to them.’”
State officials received the letter coolly, with the General Assembly instead providing $20 million. When the city asked another time for $61.7 million, the state granted just $10 million.When state lawmakers finalized the budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, they authorized another $42.5 million for the effort, but specified that it would be available to municipalities and counties across the state.
“The first mistake was the city didn’t do anything different. We didn’t respond any differently than we had been responding,” Hadden said, adding there was “lost time from January through May ... where we could have been adapting or doing something different or preparing our communities for the reality where their park districts are closed down and their City Colleges are needed, but that was not the approach under the previous administration.
Taylor and others in the neighborhood were outraged — not, they said, because they opposed the migrants, but because of the city’s plans to repurpose a school that the community had fought to keep open. The laundry provider at Wadsworth lost 76 bags of laundry. Squirrels started entering the building through open windows. In another incident, a resident threatened to stab other migrants. At North Park Village, there were ants in the men’s bathroom.Cooling systems have at times failed to work properly at Social Club, Inn of Chicago or Wadsworth.There have been far more issues at shelters across the city, documented in OEMC reports obtained by the Tribune.
Other tragedies unfolded: One resident cried after learning his 12-year old son died in a car accident back home. “Staff spoke to him and let him sleep in office.”In February, Lightfoot lost her bid for reelection when she failed to make the runoff, which Johnson went on to win in April; he was sworn in May 15. Though discussion of migrants surfaced throughout both phases of the race, few foresaw how rapidly the situation would come to define the first months of Johnson’s term.
“When I would go visit schools and see the ceilings crumbling, and see leaks and the paint peeling and playgrounds that are just completely busted, I would get so angry. Like, how can we let things get this way?” said Pacione-Zayas, a former state senator. “There are a ton of buildings in disrepair that are public buildings, and it is shameful that we have inherited that. But I put it all the way back multiple administrations.
In June, the Johnson administration said it was preparing to seek proposals for a community-based model for providing services to migrants that could also cut down on current high costs of contractual shelter staffing. The city also said it would spend $25 million to provide six months of rental assistance for more than 6,500 migrants.
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