Tents at West Loop encampment moved for city cleaning, many residents leave
Chicago authorities removed more than a dozen tents Monday from a controversial West Loop encampment to clean the sidewalks, forcing those living there to temporarily pack up their belongings before some returned later in the day.
Several residents of the encampment near Union and Ogilvie transit stations opted to leave their sidewalk spots for shelters, while others said they planned to put their tents back up after the cleaning and continue living there.
Amid the cleanup, the tent dwellers shared a range of emotions, with some in favor and others opposed, while still others said they were unbothered by the city’s move that was months in the making.
The encampments have been the subject of ongoing debate between Mayor Brandon Johnson and Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, who represents the area. Conway previously told the Tribune a top Johnson adviser tied an offer to address safety concerns there to the alderman’s vote on two key city issues.
Wind and subfreezing temperatures lingered throughout the day as shadows covered the encampments. Conway and police looked on early Monday morning as workers from the Department of Streets and Sanitation washed grime and graffiti where tents earlier stood under the West Lake Street viaduct.
“I hate that it took so much controversy to get this done between myself and the mayor’s office,” Conway said near another cluster of tents under the West Fulton Street viaduct.
Everyone at the site was offered “rapid rehousing” by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services workers and affiliated nonprofit organizations, the alderman said. Five encampment residents decided to go to shelters, in addition to seven more who recently moved to shelters as workers alerted residents about the planned cleanup, Conway said. Around 10 people planned to stay.
Conway said he hopes people walking in the area will feel safer and disabled residents will have an easier time using the sidewalk.
Four shootings and four armed robberies have occurred near the camps since early October, including the fatal shooting of a 59-year-old man on Dec. 7, Conway said. A week before that, a man was arrested at a tent with $60,000 in drugs and a gun, he added. Around 1,500 residents, citing safety issues, signed a petition in mid-November calling for the mayor’s office to remove the tents.
“Being homeless isn’t illegal, that’s fine,” Conway said. “Hopefully this goes back to being a peaceful encampment, not the magnet for drugs and violent crime it’s been.”
The site has been home to several sturdy winterized orange tents that feature foundations, heating and lighting. Last winter, the tents were the subject of plans for a similar off-street cleaning that activists vocally opposed.
The orange tents have become a “a locus of criminal activity,” Conway said
As the alderman spoke Monday, a yellow bulldozer rolled behind him onto the wide sidewalk and crunched one of the abandoned orange tents before the operator maneuvered the machine to scoop up the remains and drop them into a nearby dump truck.
The tent’s former resident had chosen to go to a shelter, a DFSS worker said.
Emails recently released by the city show plans to power wash the area were underway in October, but canceled because the mayor’s office didn’t approve the work. When the plans to clean under the viaducts became public Friday, mayoral spokesperson Ronnie Reese described the effort as “routine cleaning” typically done twice a year.
One woman who said she has lived in the area off and on for four years told the Tribune she had never seen such a cleaning.
Under a North Milwaukee Avenue viaduct, she hurried to grab belongings from her tent and pile them in a nearby alleyway as city workers finally made it to her block. As she hustled, a car drove down the alley and ran over the tent’s poles. They crunched.
The woman was freezing, sad and frustrated the city waited until winter to clean, she said.
“Is it just because people got elected, and everybody’s embarrassed thinking they can’t walk their dog and they’re trying to prove a point?” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “Not everybody out here is a drug dealer or a hooker or whatever they say. Some people have just fallen on bad times and are trying to make the best of it.”
She argued that the tent residents look out for passersby and take care of one another. They aren’t unsafe and they don’t want trouble, she said.
The woman said she’s had to sleep on cot-covered basketball courts when she’s previously decided to go to shelters. On Monday, she opted to continue living on the street instead.
The area’s tents, including hers, were going to go back up once city workers finished, she promised.
“What did we actually accomplish?” she said. “It’s a waste.”
One resident who decided to stay praised the power washing as “a good thing,” while another said it “really doesn’t bother” him. The latter put his red tent back up on a street corner before work crews were finished.
Isabella Mancini, mobile outreach manager for the nonprofit Haymarket Center, talked to two men under the Milwaukee Avenue viaduct. Her organization had warned the residents about the impending cleaning and helped get them suitcases, garbage bags and cleaning supplies to move.
Shelter capacity is limited this time of year, she said.
“It can be challenging for something like this to happen in the winter,” she said. “I think people are definitely nervous about losing this as an option if they do want to stay.”
One of the two men she spoke with opted to stay. The other, Raphael Mathis, 56, took the offer for shelter.
“Right now, I’m really changing my life. I’m going to a shelter. I’m going to give myself a chance. I’m tired of addiction,” he said as he waited for a transport van.
Mathis had stayed at the site for two weeks. It was like “hell,” he said, with some people fighting over drugs and one man even getting jumped.
The problems were caused by drug dealers who don’t live in the encampment, but come to the area, he said.
While he understood how some tent residents felt settled and attached to the spot, he said he felt like the community was giving them a “decent chance” with the cleanup. He had solid plans for when he finally arrived at the shelter: take a hot shower, eat, go to sleep.
“And thank God.”
