Workers are set to start building Chicago’s first government-run tent encampment for migrants at a Southwest Side site as soon as Wednesday, officials said after a series of recent false starts at the controversial base camp, where an environmental assessment has yet to be released.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office announced the latest timeline before touting a new push by Chicago churches to open their doors to the hundreds of migrants who remain at police stations and O’Hare International Airport. But it is unclear whether that will be enough to get those new arrivals out of the makeshift encampments before the Brighton Park migrant camp can open — mid-December, at the earliest.
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Questions over potential contaminants in the soil and other viability issues with the land at 38th Street and California Avenue also remain unanswered, though Johnson said his office is on track to publish a report addressing those concerns by the end of the week.
Asked at a news conference why construction is starting before those results are publicly released, the mayor stressed, “Winter’s coming, fast.”
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And city officials said they’re confident the “additional details” to be released this week on the ongoing assessment at the site should not impede progress on setting up the base camp for about 2,000 migrants.
“Look, the international crisis that I inherited six months ago, I’ve made it very clear that we are going to make sure that we remove people out of police districts: women, children who are living on floors and sleeping outside — that we’re going to create spaces that provide more dignity,” Johnson said.
The mayor did not directly refute fears from environmental advocates that the former industrial site at Brighton Park had contaminants but expressed confidence his office has been transparent and that “the community partners know exactly what’s happening. Alders know exactly what’s happening.”
“As we’ve been doing at all of our sites, we’ve assessed and we have looked for any contaminants, and all of the remediation that’s necessary to eliminate the contaminants, that’s very much a part of our overall agenda,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s comments came a day after Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the state would foot the bill for the Brighton Park camp, with the money coming out of the $160 million his administration has earmarked to help deal with the influx of asylum-seekers to Chicago. Of that $160 million initially touted as a fully state-funded effort, Pritzker is actually counting on $40 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that hasn’t been approved yet, according to his administration.
The governor’s office has said the camp will not officially open its doors until the environmental viability assessment is complete.
As for who will ultimately be in charge of the 38th and California base camp, both Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on Tuesday that it was a collaboration.
Despite the state footing the bill to set up and operate the tent encampment under its contract with GardaWorld Federal Services, Pritzker on Tuesday said the responsibility for any issues that arise there, or at the smaller indoor shelter in Little Village, would be shared with the city.
“It’s part of the city shelter system,” Pritzker said at an unrelated event. “And, certainly, if there are challenges, the city and the state will work together to communicate with GardaWorld what those challenges are that we need to overcome.”
The state has reached an agreement with GardaWorld in which the company won’t bill for work performed there if the site proves to be inhabitable, Pritzker’s office said.
Ald. Julia Ramirez, 12th, said that while she was “happy to hear” about the city’s apparent confidence in the environmental safety of the site to start construction, she wished “there was more documentation and more proof to provide where that confidence is coming from.”
Ramirez first told residents on Saturday that construction at the site was starting this week, which the mayor’s office pushed back on, saying only that “delivery and staging of equipment has been scheduled for today so construction can begin at a later date.”
“I think it’s just important that the more information the better as people see a lot of the work being done,” Ramirez said. She said she looked forward to the assessment results being released later this week.
Even if the assessment finds the ground of the site is suitable after remediation efforts, Anthony Moser, a founding member of the nonprofit group Neighbors for Environmental Justice, said the group has larger environmental concerns about housing anyone there.
“I don’t want to give the impression that there is a safe way to do this because we consider the whole thing they’re trying to do to be unsafe,” Moser said. The city is “taking an extremely vulnerable group of people and putting them on a truck lot, in an industrial corridor, by the highway, surrounded by sources of pollution where they’re going to be running diesel generators.”
Moser disagreed that Johnson was being true to his commitment for environmental justice and transparency throughout this process.
“I think putting people on a site that has contamination does not seem like that kind of commitment,” he said. “I also noticed he was talking about the transparency component of this, saying everybody knows what’s going on, which is kind of remarkable.”
“They didn’t announce GardaWorld,” or when assessments were starting, the lease agreement with the site’s owners, the site’s history of toxic metals or the start of construction, Moser said.
“They’ve not announced any part of this process voluntarily,” he said. “Every single part of it is a decision we’ve become aware of through other channels.”
The cold weather is increasing the pressure on officials to find more warm places for the migrants to sleep. As of Tuesday, more than 22,700 migrants have arrived in Chicago in the last 15 months, per city data.
Now about 1,100 migrants remain at the Chicago police districts, with another 150 at O’Hare International Airport. That’s down from a peak of about 3,800 migrants across the stations and airports. Another 12,900 of them were at the city-run shelters.
Johnson’s announcement Tuesday that a coalition of faith organizations will shelter some of the migrants inside their churches was expected to alleviate some of the crowding at CPD stations.
Starting Wednesday, Grace and Peace Church pastor John Zayas said, those groups will send buses to pick up migrants with a goal of “making a huge impact” by clearing all police stations by Dec. 1.
About 100 migrants will be given shelter during the start of the operation on Wednesday, with 20 migrants staying at each church, Zayas said. He added there will be no definitive end date to the endeavor, which is beginning with $350,000 in funds from charity to buoy the services.
For now, 17 churches are part of the first phase of the initiative, meaning there may still be families at the police stations and the airport who need shelter over the next weeks, but Zayas said the coalition intends to grow.
He and city officials said the goal was to transition the migrants to permanent housing within 60 days but did not go far as to say whether they must leave by then, as Johnson’s new policy for separate city-run shelters requires. Zayas said the migrants moving in there will be subject to a curfew and other rules and that city contractors will assist with staffing and other services.
Absent at Tuesday’s news conference with faith leaders was the Archdiocese of Chicago. But the Catholic organization is working with city officials to assess the viability of turning six to eight of its properties into shelters housing 300 people or more, Eric Wollan, chief capital assets officer, told the Tribune earlier this month.
Earlier Tuesday, mayoral spokesman Ronnie Reese said workers that day would “lay out materials, measure and begin placing bases” for the large encampment in Brighton Park, and that, barring complications, setup of the large tent structures could begin as early as Wednesday.
In his Tuesday remarks, the mayor sought to dispel assumptions that his recent announcements — of a 60-day shelter limit, of less-than-expected funding for migrant services next year — mean he is acknowledging the limits to his mission to prove Chicago’s values as a welcoming city.
”Our story is ongoing,” Johnson said. “This notion that the city of Chicago is breaking away from its values, I don’t accept that notion. What you’re hearing from families is how do we ensure that families who voted for their aspirations and hope, that those aspirations and those hopes don’t get lost.”
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