Local organizations are pushing back on Chicago’s plan to merge its migrant shelter operations with its homeless shelter network.
The city is set to launch the plan known as the One System Initiative on Jan. 1 with a total of 6,800 shelter beds.
The mayor’s proposed 2025 budget will spend 21% more to fight homelessness than it did this year — but critics claim these efforts are not enough.
According to city data, there are approximately 4,700 new arrivals living in 12 shelters. The city’s traditional shelter plan has 3,000 beds, and officials say they are currently at capacity.
Advocates fear the plan to close shelters in January will increase homelessness, leaving many Chicago residents with unmet need for shelter.
“We know that the traditional legacy shelters themselves didn’t have enough beds, and by merging and cutting back the number of beds available to new arrivals, the city is still going to be short hundreds of beds that are going to be needed to help support families,” said Andrea Ortiz, director of organizing at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and action council co-chair for the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights (ICIRR).
The coalition and partners held a press conference last month after Mayor Brandon Johnson announced the end of Chicago’s new arrivals mission and his budget proposal.
The city’s proposed spending plan for 2025 calls for $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’s spending on homelessness services increases, 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.
Members of ICIRR’s action council said the proposed budget goes against multiple recommendations from the One System Initiative and fails to provide necessary investments to ensure that resources are available for those seeking immediate and long-term assistance. Some city officials agree the initiative leaves too much uncertainty and needs work.
“Language access is its own challenge, and we’re talking bare fundamentals,” said Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th Ward), chair of the Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “The city is not that good at doing language access. … How do you track somebody who no longer has a place to live? How do you figure out how you get in contact with them again if they do need the services?”
“There’s so many things to account for,” Vasquez said, “and it sometimes feels like the administration is only focusing on things right in front of them, not the next two, three steps forward, which you need to do to do this properly.”
Advocates are pushing for more than the additional beds and extra funding. Ortiz said wraparound services are essential for new arrivals and the unhoused. ICIRR members continue to push for more progressive revenue to help fund affordable housing.
“More money and shelters is just a Band-Aid,” Ortiz said. “The problem is still going to be there.”
Ortiz said the announcement to close shelters has created some panic within the new arrivals community, along with growing concerns of what another Donald Trump presidency means. The president-elect promised to execute the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
“I think everyone here feels dire,” Vasquez said. “The only thing that brings me any level of solace is that we’ve gone through four years of a Trump presidency before, so some of that muscle memory is still there, but what it’s going to take is always having real conversations with each other and figuring out how to partner up, and if we don’t do that, we’re going to be even worse off.”
Heather Cherone contributed to this report.
