The city of Chicago’s landing zone for migrants at Desplaines and Polk streets on Jan. 3, 2024. (WTTW News)

Chicago is set to spend 21% more in 2025 to directly fight homelessness than it did this year, as city, state and county officials transition to a unified shelter system that will care for migrants as well as longtime residents who are unhoused, records show.

Members of the City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee late Thursday celebrated the new approach to homelessness in Chicago, known as the One System Initiative, and the end of the city’s dedicated effort to care for migrants who make their way to Chicago after crossing the southern border.

Ald. Michelle Harris (8th Ward) said the new system would be more equitable and end the perception among residents that city officials offered migrants more assistance than longtime Chicagoans living on the city’s streets.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed spending plan for 2025 calls for the city to spend $195.6 million on homeless services, records show. By comparison, Chicago’s 2024 budget called for the city to spend $161 million to fight homelessness, records show.

Even as Chicago boosts spending on homelessness services, the number of employees charged with doing the work will drop by more than 25%, records show.

At the same time, Johnson’s 2025 budget eliminates plans to set aside an additional $150 million to house, feed and care for migrants. Those funds were included in the mayor’s budget forecast, released at the end of August, and helped the city’s projected budget deficit balloon to $982 million.

There were approximately 4,700 migrants living in 12 facilities as of Friday, according to city data. The city’s traditional shelter system, which has 3,000 beds, is at capacity, officials said.

Once the new system launches in January, it will have 6,800 beds, according to officials.

That could lead to the eviction of approximately 900 people, raising fears of a new surge of unhoused Chicagoans being forced to sleep on the city’s streets just as cold weather begins to settle over the city.

During the hours-long hearing that did not end until nearly 8:30 p.m., no City Council member asked Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Brande Knazze about the looming shortage of shelter beds, or expressed concern that Chicago’s unsheltered population could be on the verge of surging.

Johnson has endured a political firestorm for supporting the city’s efforts to care for the migrants, which has cost Chicago taxpayers $198.7 million since the crisis began.

The number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets tripled between January 2023 and January 2024, according to the annual survey used by federal officials to track homelessness.

More than 18,800 people in Chicago lacked a permanent place to sleep, according to the annual “point-in-time” count, which sends volunteers out to count the number of unsheltered people on the city’s streets on a single night and is used by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials to determine federal funding levels. The 2024 count took place on Jan. 25.

That included more than 3,500 unhoused longtime Chicagoans living in city shelters, and 1,400 longtime Chicagoans who were unsheltered, according to the data.

A new policy implemented by President Joe Biden has significantly reduced the number of migrants crossing the border without permission to the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020.

The last bus of migrants from Texas arrived in Chicago in mid-June, officials said.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]