City Council approves $51 million in funding for migrant housing amid raucous debate
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Chicago City Council voted Wednesday to spend $51 million in funding from a 2021 budget surplus to pay for efforts to care for migrants from Central and South America who have been sent here from Texas, following a heated debate that was repeatedly interrupted by angry protesters.
The vote came one week after three alderpersons opposed to the measure temporarily blocked a final vote during Mayor Brandon Johnson's first City Council meeting.
After arranging for a meeting this week to take up that vote, aldermen approved the funding plan 34-13, after opponents in the council gallery repeatedly booed supporters who spoke up during the public comment period at the start of the meeting and aldermen who spoke during the formal debate, prompting Johnson to repeatedly chastise them, asking for both sides to respect each other's positions and allow each other to speak uninterrupted.
One woman who said she was with the group Black Lives Matter, Women of Faith, said aldermen should not be spending millions to set up temporary shelters for new migrants in Chicago before doing more to address the city's existing problems with homelessness.
"We need to take care of our community. We need to take care of our Black community. We need to open up these schools for mental health," she said. "We need to take care of our homeless. We need to open up these centers for mental health. We need to allocate some of this money for our Black children, for the Black community. We have not gotten anything for our community, and we are sick and tired of being sick and tired."
"We came over here being raped, stolen, beaten, chained in the bottom of ships- and you give migrants $51 million?" a man said.
Anooshka Gupta, a community organizer with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago, said Chicago has a duty to address the incoming refugees immediate needs for housing, clothing, and other support while they search for long-term housing.
"When recently-arrived families are sleeping on the floors of police stations with nowhere to go, we know that Chicago is not living up to its values. We have seen how this humanitarian crisis has exposed our city's existing gaps in services and resources," Gupta said, adding that aldermen also need to do more to support Chicago's existing struggles with affordable housing for everyone. "City Council has the opportunity to decide right now to reverse decades of disinvestment in Black and Brown communities. We shouldn't be here fighting with one another for resources. Everyone deserves the opportunity to thrive, not just survive. We cannot keep playing games with people's lives, and I'm asking that this be the starting point rather than the end."
While the shouting between supporters and opponents of the ordinance prompted Chicago police officers to remove several people from the crowd inside City Hall, the debate among aldermen was more measured, though often still passionate.
"The soul of Chicago is somewhat on trial today regarding this ordinance," said Ald. David Moore (17th), one of the 13 alderpersons who voted against the funding measure.
Moore said he cold not support spending $51 million to help new migrants in Chicago when the city hasn't done enough to support its existing homeless population.
The alderman said about 15% of the population of his ward is Latino, and "It hurts my heart as I hear people talk about trying to make this a Black and Brown issue. Those politicians at the top do that mess."
"I have a diverse population, and I hear those same people – Black, white, Latino, everybody different races, saying 'What about us?' So people keep saying there's enough to go around. I've heard that over and over. I've heard that over and over. So if there's enough to go around, then let's see the ordinance where there's the enough," he added.
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th), whose ward includes a temporary migrant shelter at the fieldhouse at Leone Beach Park, voted for the funding, and said the anger on display at Wednesday's meeting was the result of decades of disinvestment in Black neighborhoods across the city.
"A conflict is being created at a weak point in this city, and it's frustrating because this weak point wouldn't exist if our city hadn't spent decades not serving Black residents," she said.
Hadden said she agrees the city needs to do more to support the Black community, including reparations for descendants of enslaved Black people, but the city also still needs to support migrants who have been sent to Chicago, noting they didn't choose to come here, but were sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as part of his protest against the Biden administration's immigration policies.
"I'm going to support this, because it's the right thing to do in this moment," she said. "Everybody that's been working hard for this, you've got to show up for Black Chicagoans with the same energy."
In urging their colleagues to support the $51 million to support asylum seekers, several Latino alderpersons voiced support for finally approving some form of reparations for the descendants of enslaved African Americans in Chicago.
"We have an obligation to come back to pass a reparations ordinance, to make sure that that ordinance is also representative of what our Black siblings need in the city of Chicago. But we also know that folks who were sent here – not by choice – need this support today," said freshman Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th).
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) said the City Council has a duty to address the inequities facing both Black and Latino communities, and can afford to do both.
"We cannot have children starving, no matter where we are. We cannot have people begging for shelter when we have the resources. Today we can make a decision as a community to start undoing these injustices by investing in every single corner of the city of Chicago," he said.
Both supporters and opponents said the city needs more help from the state and federal governments to help pay for care being provided to asylum seekers who have arrived in Chicago from Texas.
"This should be put on our federal government. This should be put on our state," said Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st), who voted against the ordinance.
Napolitano also noted Chicago has been a so-called "sanctuary city" since 1985, when Mayor Harold Washington signed an executive order barring city agencies from enforcing federal immigration laws, and that the City Council later expanded upon that by passing a "Welcoming City" ordinance in 2012, further protecting immigrants in Chicago.
"In the frustration, we all want to yell and point fingers at Texas, and the governor in Texas, I heard at one point trafficking all these people here. That's not right. We declared ourself a sanctuary city, so therefore that governor is going to send these people – these poor people who have nowhere to go, nowhere to eat, nowhere to sleep, nowhere to shower – to places that have declared themselves sanctuary," Napolitano said. "That falls on us. We never prepared in '85, we never prepared in 2011, we never prepared in 2021."
Ald. Nick Sposato (38th), who said his ward was "ambushed" by plans to open a respite center for 400 migrants at Wilbur Wright College in his ward, voted against the funding plan, and defended Abbott for sending migrants to Chicago.
"Governor Abbott is doing these people a favor. Brownsville, Texas, is a dirt-poor town the size of Aurora," he said. "We can't accommodate 8,000, and we think they can accommodate 100,000? It's not going to happen. He's doing them a favor. So now we have to step up and figure this out."
The debate ended with a passionate speech from a tearful Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th), whose ward includes a migrant respite center at the former Wadsworth Elementary School in Woodlawn, said she knows "it's right to want to help other people, because as Black people, that's what we do, but when the hell are y'all gonna help us? When?"
"Saying no doesn't mean that I want to hurt migrant families. Voting yes does not mean I don't care about Black Chicago, and don't give me that if I vote yes, because I'm the same woman that went on a hunger strike when they closed schools, and half of the people here didn't say s***," Taylor added. "My yes vote, if that bothers you, so be it. If you take away my vote, so be it, but you need to look at yourself in the mirror."
Repeatedly saying "hurt people don't hurt people," Taylor said she supports providing support to asylum seekers who were not given a choice but to come to Chicago, but she's tired of the Black community being asked to help shoulder the burden of the crisis when their own needs haven't been properly addressed.
Nonetheless, she said the Black community needs to stand in support of migrants who have nowhere to go.
"As Black people who have been hurt continuously by the city and the country it loves, it ain't our responsibility to take care of everybody else. And we're tired, because we do that," she said. "When we fought for civil rights, when we fought for our seat at the table, when we fought just to drink out of a damn fountain, it was us. But hurt people don't hurt other hurt people."
After the meeting, Johnson said he supports increasing the real estate transfer tax on properties valued at more than $1 million to generate revenue to combat homelessness. Doing so would require either legislation to be approved by the Illinois General Assembly, or passage of a voter referendum approving the tax hike.
The mayor said he's committed to working with alderpersons and state lawmakers to passing that measure, known as "Bring Chicago Home."
"That's going to be a collaborative approach," Johnson said. "I know there's some organizing that will be done around that, so that we can engage the entire city of Chicago. That's the best way to move democracy forward, by calling the question as we would say in City Council. So I'm very much committed to a revenue stream or revenue streams that ensure that we are dealing with the crises of those who are unhoused in the city of Chicago, while also making sure that there's room for those that we are welcoming."
Johnson said he doesn't see the heated debate at Wednesday's meeting as a sign that his political honeymoon is over after taking office earlier this month.
"The city of Chicago did not fall apart because people were emotional today. In fact, I would argue that the city of Chicago is stronger, because even through that debate, we were still able to have a democratic process where voices were heard," he said. "The challenge that I inherited from the previous administration, we're not going to duck from it. We're not going to dodge it. We're going to take it head-on, because that's who we are as the city of Chicago. We're going to collaborate and work together to figure out how we can actually solve the critical problems that people expect us to solve."
Despite some xenophobic rhetoric shouted by opponents in the City Council gallery, Johnson said he believes the vast majority of Chicagoans understand the challenge the city faces when it comes to the thousands of migrants that have been brought here.
"Is anyone going to disagree that Black communities in particular have been disinvested in? No one's going to disagree with that. Y'all know the work that I did before I got here; organizing against school closings, mental health centers being shut down," he said. "The tone really reflects the failures of the past. But today was a demonstration of how we move forward. I'm confident that we will continue to build the type of consensus that's needed in order to bring the city of Chicago closer together. There really is enough for everyone. It's a matter of how we prioritize that enough."
More than 8,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Central and South America, have arrived in Chicago since the end of August 2022, when Abbott first began sending migrants to Chicago and other so-called "sanctuary cities."
The $51 million approved by the City Council on Wednesday will only cover the costs of assistance for asylum seekers through June 30. It's unclear how Mayor Johnson and the City Council plan to pay for those costs on a long-term basis.
Asked if taxpayers should be concerned Budget Committee Chair Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) said, "I think we should all be concerned anytime we're having to utilize this level of resources on a temporary situation, especially with not a real sight of federal support coming."
So how exactly will the money be spent?
We sat down with Ald. Sigcho-Lopez, who has been on the front lines of the migrant crisis since August of last year. He said the mayor's "working group" – made up in part of members of the Latino Caucus – will help decide how to spend the money.
First, the funding will go to the most urgent needs.
"Shelter - basic shelter - food insecurity, and minimum staffing – I think that's what we're talking about here," Sigcho-Lopez said.
Money will go to support migrant medical expenses, and the cost of applying for asylum.
As for a long-term plan, there isn't one.
"Having a plan prevents this, you know, from becoming a tragedy – which we're already starting to see," Sigcho-Lopez said.