Crime & Law
Fire at North Park Homeless Encampment Highlights Safety Concerns
A tent fire that broke out Monday morning at a homeless encampment reignited safety concerns for individuals experiencing homelessness and living in public parks. The encampment along the North Shore Channel is now set to be removed, possibly displacing dozens.
This isn’t the first fire to pop up in Legion Park, and fires in and around homeless encampments are not uncommon, according to Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness.
“Folks who are living in encampments are doing what they can to survive,” Schenkelberg said. “They might be cooking outside or trying to stay warm — there’s a lot of different reasons fires might start.”
The Far North Side fire follows President Donald Trump’s executive order directing state and local governments to crack down on the unhoused community. Titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” the order calls for restoring civil commitment; shifting funding away from “housing first” practices; and prioritizing federal grants to states and cities that “enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.”
In a statement, the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness condemned the executive order, saying: “Our nation’s leaders have the power to meaningfully address homelessness but have repeatedly chosen policies that deepen the crisis. This executive order follows a pattern of harmful decisions that disproportionately impact Black and Brown Americans and those who are already living on the brink, including reckless cuts to healthcare, food assistance, and education. This disparity is particularly stark in Chicago, where 70% of people living on the street are Black, despite Black residents making up just 29% of the city’s total population, according to point-in-time data released this month.”
In a statement, the city of Chicago said it’s planning a more comprehensive cleaning of the encampment. In the past, those cleanings have involved the removal of unused tents, debris and garbage.
Whether people who live in the Legion Park encampment will be allowed to move back in once the cleaning is complete is not yet known.
Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th Ward), whose constituents include residents who live along the North Shore Channel, said in an email that “we can’t wait for another potential tragedy to happen before doing the right thing for both those living in these encampments and their neighbors. We must work to place these individuals into the supportive housing they need and close down these encampments before another incident occurs. Compassion must be top of mind in this work, as well as the safety and well-being of those in the encampments and the communities that surround them.”
