Chicago’s cost to care for migrants arriving since August tops $100 million

CHICAGO -- The city of Chicago has spent more than $100 million to provide help and services to the thousands of migrants who have arrived in Chicago from south of the U.S. border since last August, mostly on personnel costs, officials said Wednesday.

The cost breakdown came during a hearing run by the City Council Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which also voted to hold monthly meetings on the topic moving forward. Of the $101.3 million, $72.6 million was spent on staffing the migrant shelters that are run by the city but rely on outside nonprofits for day-to-day operations.

The next biggest buckets of migrant services funding: The city spent $10.6 million to house asylum-seekers outside of the shelters, $9.1 million on food, $4.1 million on facility maintenance, $4 million on rental assistance, $600,000 on legal services and $250,000 on transportation of the new arrivals.

Wednesday’s committee meeting was the first time such specific numbers were released by the city since Chicago’s migrant crisis began 10 months ago, when the first busload of asylum-seekers departed from Texas under the direction of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Since then, more than 10,500 new arrivals have come to the city, prompting tense debates among local officials and communities over how to best help the migrants while working with limited resources.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, spoke on behalf of his administration during the hearing, where she attempted to cast their efforts as an extension of the city’s ethos as a sanctuary city that welcomes all.

“Chicago is where it’s at. We’re leading the nation in this work,” Pacione-Zayas told aldermen. “Granted, we don’t have the numbers like New York, but we’re not shutting our doors. We’re doubling down. And so I think we have an opportunity to demonstrate that if Chicago gets it right, it can happen anywhere in the world. That’s our objective.”

Currently, almost 5,000 new arrivals are living inside city-run shelters, with 650 more waiting inside Chicago police stations for new spots to open up. That is a substantial increase from the 400 migrants who were inside police stations last week, but still down by hundreds compared with earlier last month, when alarm over their living conditions reached a fever pitch. Less than 200 of the asylum-seekers have found permanent housing, with more than 400 awaiting move-in after signing leases.

There are currently a dozen shelters operating in buildings spanning the city: Wright College in Dunning, the former Wadsworth Elementary in Woodlawn, The Standard Club in the Loop, Inn of Chicago on the Near North Side, Leone Beach field house in Rogers Park, Piotrowski Park in South Lawndale, Brands Park in Avondale, North Park Village in North Park, the YMCA in West Ridge, Young Women’s Leadership Charter School in Douglas, Daley College in Ford City and the Gage Park field house in Gage Park. Some of those buildings were shuttered until being converted to migrant housing; others were not.

Johnson’s administration is considering five more shelters, according to a memo distributed Friday. The Community Justice Center in Burnside, operated by the Cook County state’s attorney, is slated to see up to 200 migrants move in as early as mid-July pending repairs. The former Marine Corps Reserve Center in Budlong Woods is “awaiting appraisal & environmental assessment” amid plans to host up to 1,000 people there, and a former CVS in Little Village will tentatively open its doors to up to 270 migrants in mid-July.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s team is “in discussion” with Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, for Taylor Park in Bronzeville as a potential site housing up to 500 new arrivals. The same goes for Broadway Armory in Uptown, which falls in Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth’s ward, for up to 500 migrants.

Previous plans for migrant facilities — at South Shore High School, Calumet High School, Dett Elementary School and Hope House — are “on hold,” the memo says.

The document also notes the 30-day limit for migrants staying at city shelters has been “paused” until “a new policy can be put in place that aligns with resettlement resources we are working to bring online.”

However, Chicago continues to struggle with how it will find the money required to continue temporarily housing and then resettling the migrants. The bulk of the $101.3 million spent so far comes from the city’s own coffers, mostly via a $51 million appropriation last month from a previous year’s budget surplus.

The city also designated $12 million in its 2023 budget toward migrant services and diverted another $4 million from its emergency rental assistance program. The non-city funding sources were $30 million from the state and $4.3 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but Chicago recently was awarded another $20 million from the state and $10.6 million from FEMA.

Amid the money woes, Johnson’s administration has also contended with reports of moldy food and other poor living conditions at the city shelters, which he responded to by blaming Abbott and other Republican governors of border states, as well as his predecessor Lori Lightfoot, for allowing the need in Chicago to become this acute.

“I’m certainly aware of the challenges that I inherited, and this is why I’ve made it a part of my everyday focus to make sure that we are decompressing the police stations and that we are providing a pathway to sustainable existence and living in the city of Chicago,” Johnson said at an unrelated news conference last week.

Lightfoot did catch flak from aldermen throughout the final months of her tenure over what they said were communication mishaps regarding the placement of shelters in their ward, but strife over the government response has continued to bubble with Johnson running City Hall. That has lately included more pointed criticism at Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden over shortchanging the city on funding and more.

Pritzker on Tuesday answered a question about the Biden administration’s slow pace of processing asylum applications by also blaming “inhumane governors in Florida and Texas” while contrasting Johnson’s early leadership of the situation with that of Lightfoot’s.

“Look, I think the city of Chicago is today doing a great deal more than it was several months ago even to address the migrant crisis,” Pritzker said. “There are many more people who are getting shelter through the city of Chicago as a result of the work being done under this new administration than had been done before.”

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