Migrants are leaving Chicago shelters with the help of rental assistance. Some landlords are skeptical, others step in to help

CHICAGO -- The sweet smell of chicken soup filled Ari’s home as she cooked dinner while her husband was at work. Her 2-year-old son was napping, but his toys adorned the living room floor.

“I’m so sorry for the mess,” she said in Spanish. “I haven’t had time to clean up.”

Ari, 32, and her family arrived in Chicago from Venezuela last September seeking asylum. She remembers that day and the uncertainty she felt “as if it had been yesterday.”

“We had no idea what was going to happen, where were we going to live,” said Ari, who preferred not to use her full name for safety reasons. The family lived in uncertainty at a hotel with hundreds of other families seeking asylum.

Now, she said, she’s grateful to have made a home of her own in an apartment in a North Side neighborhood thanks to a rental assistance program that helps asylum-seekers move out of shelters and into permanent housing.

But while many migrant families like Ari’s have received rental assistance and signed leases for housing units around the city, more than 11,000 new arrivals remain in limbo, housed in city and volunteer-run shelters and police stations, waiting for their turn. Some are unaware of the assistance available.

Though Mayor Brandon Johnson aims to resettle asylum-seekers amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis, finding units and landlords willing to rent is a challenge, say advocates. Some real estate professionals worry that after the assistance runs out, tenants won’t be able to continue paying rent. Other property owners and managers say they don’t know how to help.

During a panel on the issue for real estate leaders and building owners in Chicago, advocates of the program called on landlords across the city to rent to asylum-seekers. The June 11 discussion was hosted by the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance and the Latino Real Estate Investors Council.

Ami Novoryta, chief program officer of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the organizations in charge of providing case management to find migrants permanent housing, said during the panel that locating units has been difficult.

Ari learned about the program in December, when families living in hotels were prioritized by the state for rental assistance.

For days, she said, she would go on online looking for apartments and use Google Translate to email property managers, explaining her situation and asking if they would be willing to rent under the program’s guidelines. It took her nearly a month to find an apartment, and she had to wait until February to move in.

“Most said no, or didn’t even reply,” she said. The rent voucher covered the entire $1,400 monthly rent for the two-bedroom apartment, and most of the furniture was donated.

She and her husband are responsible for paying the utilities. “But it’s never more than $100 a month,” she said.

Eligible migrants in the state are able to receive three months of rental assistance when they initially apply for a piece of the millions available through the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s Asylum Seeker Emergency Assistance Program. They can apply again to receive another three months of aid, for a total of up to $15,000.

The program began accepting applications Dec. 5 and has received $53.5 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars, the majority of which is for emergency rental assistance with a small portion allotted for case management work, over the course of a couple of years. The $53.5 million includes the $25 million the city was looking to allocate with state support in June, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services. Rental assistance funds from the American Rescue Plan Act are set to expire Sept. 30, 2025.

In Chicago, there is an additional $4 million available from the Chicago Department of Housing’s emergency rental assistance funds for rental assistance and case management for migrants in the city. These funds are being administered through the state’s Department of Human Services, which is working with the state’s Housing Development Authority. The city has its own contract with Catholic Charities for case management.

Asylum-seekers must live in city or state intermediate housing, such as city shelters or state-run hotels, to be eligible for rental assistance, according to the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the Illinois Department of Human Services. Applicants also must make 80% or below the area median income, but applicants do not need a source of income or employment to apply.

So far, more than 1,000 people in Illinois have been approved for rental assistance, with around $8.6 million disbursed and about 600 landlords renting to new arrivals, the agencies said.

As of earlier this month, 548 of these households approved for rental assistance have signed leases for permanent housing in Chicago, with 271 of those households having moved in, according to a statement from the city.

About 200 applicants have been denied rental assistance, primarily because they withdrew their applications from the state’s program, the agencies said.

The resettlement programs are different from other subsidized housing programs available for low-income Chicago residents through the Chicago Housing Authority. CHA programs such as public housing and vouchers are regulated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which requires noncitizens to have at least one household member with eligible immigration status in order to receive assistance, CHA spokesperson Matthew Aguilar said.

When some migrants learned from shelter staff members last week that they could potentially get assistance to move into an apartment, they got excited, said Karla Urbina, an asylum-seeker from Nicaragua living in a shelter near Rogers Park.

Urbina, who made the journey from Nicaragua by herself after leaving her children with her mother, spent a little over a month at the District 1 police station in the South Loop after arriving in late May before moving into the shelter. Her reasons for coming to the U.S. echo those of her fellow migrants: to flee violence, abuse from the government and poverty.

“For my children,” Urbina said. She hopes to find other women to share an apartment with, if that would make the process move faster.

Unlike the state’s initial goal to prioritize families, the process is the same for all rental assistance applicants, according to the state. Families are housed together, and singles are on their own but are allowed to move together as long as the landlord agrees and lists everyone on the lease.

Until she’s connected with a case manager to begin the process, “we will have to wait,” Urbina said.

As many migrants wait, some property owners told the Tribune they would be willing to rent to the new arrivals but don’t know how to help.

Steve Shah owns 81 units, mainly concentrated on the North Side and the north suburbs. He said he would like to rent to the latest flood of migrants but hasn’t had any agencies call him, even though they know him and his history of renting to new arrivals.

And while he wants to help, he said that as a smaller housing provider, he can face high risks, since there’s no guarantee the tenant will be able to pay once the rental assistance runs out. That could lead to a lengthy eviction process, which would be costly, he said.

“No good deed goes unpunished. When you take a chance on people, you don’t know what their circumstances are,” Shah said. “In some cases, they take a long time to find a stable job and sometimes some people have other issues.”

Shah said he thinks the city and state should have an expedited eviction process for migrants if they can no longer pay rent after receiving rental assistance or if they are disruptive.

Novoryta, from Catholic Charities, said on the building owners group call that around 5% of migrants who have signed leases — about 50 households — have run into any issues. Those issues came from both the property management side and the tenant side, with some people reporting pests in units, incidents of domestic violence, noise complaints and unauthorized people staying in units, she said.

“These are folks who want to stay in the United States and do not want to get involved in the legal system,” Novoryta said, adding that some migrants have skipped the rental assistance process altogether because they have saved money for rent and just need help finding a place to live.

Tom Terrell, pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Albany Park, has had five migrant families, with a total of 14 people, living in the church for about two months. Terrell said city rental assistance could help them speed up the process of finding more permanent housing.

“I think they are months away from (being able to move),” Terrell said. “It is not a hardship for us to have them here. … We’re content to let them stay here as long as they need, but I think they’re probably getting a little ready to move out.”

Jacquelina Jablonski, co-owner of I&J Good Rentals LLC, a property management company with more than 100 rentals on the Southwest Side, started renting to new arrivals in February.

She rents to six families, mostly in two-bedroom apartments with rents between $900 and $1,200. All of the families want to renew their leases after their rental assistance runs out. Jablonski said some of her tenants have work permits, and most of the families have one person in the household who has a stable income.

Jablonski said when she heard about the program — through a caseworker who was helping a family find housing — it was a “no-brainer.”

“I am Hispanic … and I don’t want to hold judgment onto my people,” Jablonski said. “I want to help out my community; I want them to make money; I want them to be able to afford the rent.”

Jablonski said she has been frustrated to hear other housing providers express resistance to renting to new arrivals.

“We all have flaws. … There’s gonna be challenges no matter what,” said Jablonski, founder of the networking group Southwest Housing Providers. “I could have somebody that has a perfect credit score, that never had any issues in their life. They could have some issues right now and just have a bad moment in their life where I just wind up being in that crossfire.”

Rafael Leon, executive director of Chicago Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., rents to seven migrant families. His organization provides more than 700 units of affordable housing in the city and suburbs.

“So far, we haven’t had any problems,” Leon said. “Sometimes people are afraid of immigrants, but I am an immigrant myself; people don’t need to be afraid of immigrants. Sometimes you need to take a risk and help people at a disadvantage.”

Ari said she and her husband feel “extremely blessed” to have found their landlord. “He is very nice to us,” she said. As their six-month rent assistance comes to an end this month, she worries she and her husband may not be able to keep up with the payments, but he has found a job working at a restaurant and the two have saved some money, she said.

Their landlord agreed to continue renting them the apartment after the financial aid stops, Ari said.

“We desperately need job permits to make sure that we can get a good job and continue paying for our rent and for a better future for our children,” she said.

For most migrants, finding work is volatile and sometimes dangerous because they lack work authorization permits. But like Ari’s husband, many will do it, even if it means working under the table.

Business leaders, along with Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other political leaders, have urged the federal government to expedite the process.

For future housing support to migrants, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 1817, which adds protections to the Illinois Human Rights Act to prevent housing providers from discriminating against someone based on their immigration status. The bill, signed June 30, is effective Jan. 1.

“SB1817 expands and strengthens the rights for all Illinoisans regardless of their immigration status and provides them with recourse for such discrimination under the IHRA, which did not previously exist,” said Jim Bennett, director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights, in a statement.

Bennett said people who believe they have experienced housing discrimination because of their actual or perceived immigration status can file a discrimination charge by visiting https://dhr.illinois.gov/about-us/contact-idhr-form.html or calling 312-814-4320 or 866-740-3953 (TTY)

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