Overcrowding, cold food and uncertain futures a way of life for migrants in Chicago’s shelters
CHICAGO -- Across the street from the 1st District police station, Hildemaro Rafael Peña Gonzalez, 23, from Venezuela, fed cereal out of a plastic takeout container to his pregnant wife Racnia del Carmen León Mendoza, 19, and rubbed her swollen belly. The couple was moved from the station to a shelter in a hotel downtown about 10 days ago, but came back to the small basketball cancha, or court, to sit on a bench in the shade.
“People have been nice (downtown),” said Gonzalez in Spanish, “But it’s nicer here.”
It’s a sentiment shared by many. Though migrants from shelters across the city told the Tribune that sleeping in a shelter bed or on an air mattress is better than on the ground in police stations, the support and care they’re receiving appears, in most cases, to be worse.
As city leaders continue to struggle to handle the inflow, the Tribune spoke to dozens of migrants from nine shelters who said that they are crowded in hotel rooms or sleeping on the ground, eating cold and unappetizing meals and unsure of where to find resources. They miss the support they found at police stations where countless Chicagoans have stepped up to help, assisting with basic needs such as food and clothes, and making them feel welcome.
The condition of the city’s 12 shelters cannot be assessed fully because the city has repeatedly denied a request from the Tribune and others for access to them. According to a letter in May from Chicago’s congressional delegation, the city has spent more than $75 million in the past nine months on over 10,000 new arrivals who have come to Chicago since August, and Chicago aldermen recently voted to spend an additional $51 million on migrant care through June.
But with space limited, migrants have been forced to sleep on the floors in police stations for weeks as they wait for placement in shelters. And those who have been moved into shelters are getting mixed levels of support and transparency from the city depending on where they are placed.
Passing time at the police station
At the 1st District station this week, 29-year-old Brayan Lozano Guzmán from Colombia received a cardboard box of toiletry kits from Lauren Elrod, a volunteer with Apostolic Faith Church down the street.
“Make a line! Make a line!” he yelled in Spanish to the nearly 30 men and women gathered on the sidewalk outside the dark police building windows, as he passed out the clear pouches full of toothbrushes, soap, and other necessities. He said he has been helping coordinate volunteer efforts at the station so there isn’t duplication.
According to a OEMC spokesperson Mary May, the city moves people from stations to temporary shelters guided by the following priorities: “medical or special needs, families, or singles with other critical needs such as pregnancy, families and singles that have been in the shelter the longest and districts that require decompression.”
But there is still a backlog. At the 1st District station, people lie on camping pads on concrete and flock to donated muffins and hot meals.
“If you are a single woman, you sometimes spend days waiting. There was one woman who spent 15 days waiting, sleeping on the floor. After city officials took her, she lost her baby,” Guzmán said.
Trains rumbled overhead as Near South Side resident Samantha Oulavong led English classes for a small group of migrants on the bleachers at the basketball court. She pulled out a Tupperware of fresh mango, passed out colorful notebooks and pens and asked the three young women from Venezuela how they were feeling.
They were university students in their country, and came here for economic opportunity, they said. To learn English, get jobs and a better education.
“It is so important for us to know English. It opens a world of economic possibilities, and will make all of our futures brighter,” said Julianna Ovalles, 23.
Kids shot hoops nearby. Oulavong wrote “fist bump” on the portable dry erase board she brought from home. She clenched her hand and lifted it into the air, making everyone laugh.
The secretive Inn of Chicago
Meanwhile, on a recent sunny afternoon, people living at a shelter at the Inn of Chicago in Streeterville spilled out onto East Ohio Street, making phone calls home or leaning against the hotel wall. Over 20 people declined to be interviewed by the Tribune, saying they were scared they might be kicked out of the shelter for talking to a reporter.
A woman named Maria said she fled Venezuela after the government took control of her family-owned auto shop. She was hesitant to give her last name to the Tribune or have her photo taken for fear she would be thrown out of the shelter.
The shelters are staffed all day and night by Favorite Staffing, a contracted vendor which works to support management operations, according to a statement from the city. Staff at the Inn of Chicago repeatedly declined to speak to the Tribune.
The doors to the shelter were locked to the public with a sign directing reporters to contact a city spokesperson with questions. Only the backs of peoples’ heads could be seen through the large street-facing windows on the second floor. A group of men sold food out of the back of a car parked in the alley across the street.
“Arepas! Arepas! Arepas!” they shouted.
Families clustered at various locations on the sidewalk, eating out of Styrofoam containers dropped off by volunteers. A city official from the Department of Finance knocked on the door of the hotel to complain to officials about illegal parking by migrants on the street outside.
The Inn of Chicago is currently housing 1,318 people, according to the city, just below capacity.
Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42, where the downtown hotel is located, said he was not consulted about the shelter and directed all questions to the mayor’s office and DFSS. The city rejected numerous requests by the Tribune to see the inside of the shelter.
Footage sent to the Tribune by migrants over WhatsApp confirms descriptions from those willing to speak about dirty bathrooms and hotel rooms crammed with as many as three to four families. Footage shows asylum-seekers at a shelter in Leone Beach Park in Rogers Park sleeping on the gymnasium floor.
“We’re doing better than we were when we were sleeping at the police district, but not by much,” Maria told the Tribune in Spanish.
‘They just don’t feel like they’re being treated as people’
Mueze Bawany, son of refugees from Pakistan and member of 50th Ward United Working Families, has been dropping donations off at various shelters across the city. Bawany is a public schoolteacher, but spends his weekends and after school hours helping migrants.
“It’s clear that the shelter conditions are very temporary and people are trying not to talk about it negatively,” said Bawany. “They just don’t feel like they’re being treated as people.”
Bawany said new arrivals complain to him that the food is inedible. They are sleeping on cots and increasingly isolated from their surrounding communities, all while processing serious accumulated trauma from the journey here, he said.
Favorite Staffing workers impose strict rules about when those at city shelters can leave and return, migrants told the Tribune. Rules for residents are consistent across all of the shelters, according to May.
Bawany described the city shelters as being “shrouded in mystery and quietness.” The lack of information extends not just to the public, but to the migrants themselves. No one seems to know what is going on, he said.
North Park Village
A family of nine from Colombia gathered around a sunny picnic table to eat takeout fried rice they had ordered to supplement their provisions at a shelter in North Park Village in North Park.
Carlos Anderes, 24, lounged in the grass with his 5-year-old niece Karon Jimena eating a clementine. Anderes’ mother Amparo Cubides said the food they had been served was too spicy for them. They get a lot of cold sandwiches, she said.
“We left Colombia because of the violence in our country,” Cubides said in Spanish. “Here, we’re only eating water and bread, but at least we’re safe. Back home, we could eat three meals a day, but we were constantly worried for our safety.”
The vendor Open Kitchens partners with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to provide 14,000 daily meals throughout the emergency shelter system, according to a statement from the city. There is a delivery of breakfast and lunch in the morning and a second delivery of a hot dinner meal in the afternoon, the statement said. Sunday meals are delivered on Saturday because there is no delivery Sunday.
“The city has worked to collaborate with community-based organizations and provide feedback to vendors on the cultural preferences of New Arrivals,” May said in a statement. “The Food Depository is purchasing these meals from BIPOC owned and certified MWBE vendors and restaurants, focusing on culturally relevant foods and incorporating feedback from the new arrivals.”
Cubides’ family took turns eating out of the white cardboard takeout Chinese box. Anderes’ nephew, 8-year-old Kevin Jair, tore open a soy sauce packet and poured it on his rice.
Cubides, like many, said she didn’t know what was going to happen to them. She said in the four weeks she had been in North Park with her sons and grandchildren, about 70 families had been taken away on buses to different locations around the city. She assumed her family would also be picked up.
“We’re waiting to be brought to a hotel,” she said.
Pressing needs
Dozens of migrants interviewed expressed similar uncertainty and anxiety about next steps: jobs, school, housing.
In the meantime, their temporary needs are falling by the wayside, said Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, part of the organizing committee of the 50th Ward United Working Families. He said that city-run shelters often don’t accept outside donations, even when city infrastructure can’t meet the needs of thousands of people.
“In fact, I’m aware of an offer to donate 30-some beds and we’re having trouble finding a place that would actually allow them in,” he said. “In some cases, migrants at police stations are receiving better care.”
Ginsberg-Jaeckle helped lead a recent outreach meeting at Rogers Elementary in West Ridge to migrant families living at a shelter in High Ridge YMCA who enrolled their children in school. He said the most concerning complaint he heard at the meeting was about their inability to get immediate medical care.
One woman shared a story about removing her own braces brackets because she didn’t have the money or know-how to seek dental care. Her teeth have fallen out of line, causing her so much pain that she’s having trouble eating and now losing weight, Ginsberg-Jaeckle said. There is need for access to medication, bilingual services, transportation to clinics and more, he said.
CDPH and CCH are working to coordinate care for migrants at shelters, according to a statement from the city. There is a clinic on the Northwest Side set up exclusively for migrants to address acute medical issues. Outside of shelter spaces, CDPH has an established program that funds outreach workers to connect unhoused individuals to care, and a dedicated team to prevent and respond to diseases in congregate settings.
A group of volunteers working to provide bedding, clothing, feminine hygiene products and transportation services to migrants housed at the shelter in Leone Beach Park has received pushback from city staff, they wrote in a letter to two North Side aldermen in late May.
“Site staff has been at best, discouraging of our efforts, and at worst openly hostile. We have already raised the issue of contract security staff on site at Leone NOT visibly wearing ID badges, and/or refusing to identify themselves/ show ID when asked. To date, this remains the case,” volunteers wrote the chiefs of staff for Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, 48th, and Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th.
Brands Park
At a shelter in Brands Park in Avondale, 13-year-old Miguel Alejandro lifted his 3-year-old brother, Dylan Santiago, across the monkey bars on the playground outside. He gently coaxed him forward, as Avondale residents watched from a nearby bench.
The family had arrived in Chicago the day before from Venezuela, said their mother Betania Faria, 28. Like many, they walked from Colombia to Panama through the Darién Gap. It was treacherous, Faria said.
“It was cold and scary,” she said in Spanish. “Full of animals, violence.”
Faria has dyed red hair and wore flip-flops. She tapped her foot as she recalled moving through Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico and across the Rio Grande with her three young children.
Chicago resident Jessica Carvajal, whose 6-year-old daughter Elena attends Linne Elementary School near the shelter, dropped off a bag of donations. She said the community has come together to provide support for the new arrivals.
“They’re out and about. There’s a bilingual school across the street and they play together,” Carvajal said.
Disparity around the city
Ginsberg-Jaeckle said not all communities have the resources to respond with open arms, especially historically disinvested neighborhoods. And, unfortunately, he said, the most disinvested neighborhoods often have the most vacated schools and buildings to be converted into shelters.
“You look at the other neighborhoods in Chicago and historically many of them have done very little in the way of resettling and certainly never to the scale,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle said. “We have decimated public structures of care in this city and this is our clarion call to rebuild those.”
A written statement to the Tribune on Friday said the city’s overall goal is to ensure shelters are a short-term solution. They have invested resources in resettlement case management and rental assistance, the statement said.
“City representatives will continue to advocate for additional federal and state funding to support our efforts with new arrivals including resources for emergency shelter and resettlement, and mission operations outside of Chicago,” the city wrote to the Tribune Friday.
Maria was moved from a police station to the Inn of Chicago over a month ago, she said. She was told people in the shelter would help her find work, she said, but no one has offered employment help.
She said she came to the U.S. so she could improve her family situation, be safe and her kids could go to a good school.
“I’m not used to living with so many people all on top of each other,” she said.
Living in a hotel with hundreds of strangers is turbulent. Her daughter just gave birth, and she said it’s a difficult environment to care for a newborn.
