City to spend more than $300 million on migrants through year's end, plans for tent base camps
CHICAGO (CBS) -- CBS 2 has learned the city will spend more than $300 million on migrants from now through the end of the year – including a new plan to house them in tent base camps.
The city has already spent $116 million on the migrant matter, while the Chicago Public Schools have spent $1.4 million of their own dollars, and the Chicago Park District $250,000, a source said.
On Friday afternoon, Mayor Brandon Johnson's team rolled out details of the plan to members of City Council. He held a series of Zoom calls with aldermen, asking each of them to pick two or three sites in their wards where either tents could be set up, or where migrants could be housed in brick-and-mortar buildings.
The Mayor's office has learned another round of buses of migrants is now headed to the city.
As CBS 2 Political Reporter Chris Tye reported, the mayor said housing migrants is undignified – calling it an issue he inherited.
The mayor has yet to unwrap the details, such as:
- How many base camps would there be?
- Where would they be?
- How would they be paid for?
- How many people would stay there, and for how long would they stay?
Earlier Friday, the mayor offered some wide-lens perspective on the subject - and we heard from one alderman whose is very much opposed to plans that brings more migrants to his ward.
"We've identified multiple locations around the city that can be suitable to treat the families and individuals who by law are seeking asylum constitutionally," Mayor Johnson said earlier Friday. "We've increased our resources to bring another agency on board to be able to help resettle these families; to move them into permanent housing faster."
"There was not a clear plan. You know you have the buses coming, get prepared. There was no preparation, and you know that they were coming – and so now we're have to clean the mess up. At what expense? said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
Tye asked Beale what his residents would say about migrants coming to his ward.
"Well, right now, we only have a dozen, and hopefully, we keep it that way," Beale said. "We will not take 1,000 migrants here in the 9th Ward."
That kind of pushback amounts to the headwinds the mayor is working with here, as over 13,000 migrants have arrived since last August - spread through 16 shelters and police stations.
Despite it, the mayor says a collaborative effort is in the air on this topic. But some aldermen say they have not been consulted at all.
As CBS 2's Marybel González reported, Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th) said he and his colleagues found out about the plan to house migrants in tents through "hearsay from a reporter on Wednesday; today from the mayor's office at 3 o'clock."
Sposato said his notice from the Mayor's office came by way of a Zoom call.
Gonzalez asked Sposato if he would be submitting any response for the mayor's request to find two to three sites for migrants.
"I will not," he said, "but there is no place to put them unless they're going to put them in parks."
There was no word late Friday when the tents will be pitched, or how many camps there would be.
We do know the parking lot of the long-shuttered Halsted Indoor Mall, at 115th and Halsted streets, could be a site for a base camp. It had been slated to become a space for housing for low-income Chicagoans.
Meanwhile, as the city continues their efforts to house migrants, community members are doing their part to help them.
"We have 300 tamales," said Marcos Morales, a member of the Pilsen Hispanic Seventh-Day Adventist Church. "We also have a lot of rice, a lot of spaghetti."
Morales and fellow members of the church have been providing food to migrants, and now they are also providing blankets.
The migrants they are helping are all staying on the floors of the Near West (12th) District police station.
"We want to serve as a motivation to others. We want to motivate other churches, organizations to do the same – without, you know, focusing on who you're helping," Morales said, "Just go out and do good."
The expectation is the base camps would be constructed by the time cold weather arrives. Once we get the firm details, of course, we will pass them along.
