Johnson’s tent city plan legal, ‘but that doesn’t make it a good idea’

Advocates for migrants and human rights want a lot more answers to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to use huge tents to house migrants.

Among their questions: Where will they go? Will they really handle a Chicago winter? What sort of rights and resources will people have?

“It’s not anything unlawful,” Ed Yohnka, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said of Johnson’s proposed plan. “But that doesn’t make it a good idea.”

Yohnka wants a list of protections residents would have — including freedom of movement.

“There’s basic fundamental human rights things we’d like to see in writing,” he said.

Access to medical facilities, transportation and recreational facilities are key, Yohnka said. 

“People decide where they’re going to live based on access to these kinds of things,” he said, “and these are folks who are living in our community. They’re not going to be any different than the rest of us.”

New York City, which opened a 2,000-person, mega-tent shelter this week, placed theirs on an island between Manhattan and Queens, a location which advocates have decried as inaccessible and flood-prone, according to reporting by the Daily News. 

In revealing the plan yesterday, Johnson said resources would be supplied by Chicagoans as a way to reduce the “exorbitant” costs now being paid to a private staffing agency,” referring to Favorite Healthcare Staffing.

The city has awarded the Kansas-based company nearly $60 million since an initial $1 million in September, around two weeks after the first buses arrived.

Sara Izquierdo is founder of the volunteer Mobile Migrant Health Team, which has cared for thousands of migrants at the direction of the city since May. She expects they will care for migrants in the tent camps, too.

“It’s disappointing that the city is investing in unsustainable band-aid solutions,” Izquierdo said, instead of building “long-term infrastructure for our unhoused.”

Cold weather was a key issue at a late August meeting between city officials and a coalition of migrant advocacy groups, according to documents obtained by the Sun-Times.

“The goal is to get folks out of police stations in preparation for winter. All options are being considered,” Rey Wences, a key member of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Rights was reported saying at the Illinois Latino Policy Agenda meeting.

Karina Ayala-Bermejo is CEO of coalition member Instituto del Progreso Latino, which had taken the lead on sourcing winter clothes for migrants.

Given how many migrants are sleeping on the ground outside police stations, she was relieved by Johnson’s plan — provided “they’re going to have beds, that they’re going to be safe and that [it] will be a temporary place where they’ll be more connected to long term strategies.”

Not everyone agrees.

Britt Hodgdon is a lead volunteer on the Police Station Response Team, which has taken the lead on caring for migrants at police stations. The team believes tents would have been an “OK solution in the beginning,” but are “unpalatable” now, she said. 

“This is a historic moment we’re in,” Hodgdon said. “It might serve us well to ask us some legacy questions: How do we want to be remembered for this?”

Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.