HYDE PARK — Residents of Kenwood’s Indian Village met with native leaders Monday to protest the continued operation of a shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness.
The previous Greatest Western resort, 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive in Kenwood, opened final yr as a shelter for asylum seekers and different unhoused migrants. The neighboring Lake Shore Resort, additionally vacant, opened to migrants in late 2023 and closed in October.
The town introduced in February that it deliberate to take over the Greatest Western shelter from the state beginning July 1 and proceed working it as a shelter for all unhoused households by way of town’s One System Initiative.
“The necessity for shelter is large” as homelessness in Chicago greater than tripled from 2023 to 2024 and rents proceed to rise close to the shelter, Colleen Mahoney, assistant director of the Illinois Workplace to Stop and Finish Homelessness, stated Feb. 20.
Regardless of that want, neighbors at Monday’s assembly stated town has repeatedly failed to hunt neighborhood engagement on the shelters and that the shelter’s operation has impacted their high quality of life.
Almost 300 neighborhood members attended the assembly at Hyde Park’s Nichols Park Fieldhouse, 1355 E. 53rd St., the place anger at officers’ communication failures steadily bled into frustration with — and intolerance of — individuals experiencing homelessness.
A petition opposing the shelter circulated by Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Group, which organized Monday’s assembly, has gathered greater than 900 signatures.
“The town by no means engaged with our neighborhood previous to opening the momentary migrant shelter, nor committing to a everlasting shelter,” assembly co-organizer Cathy Perry stated. “We’re giving the neighborhood a platform to specific their considerations in regards to the metropolis shifting the panorama of our neighborhood and high quality of life in a single day.
“We need to inform town we aren’t OK with a 24-hour, seven-day-per-week, everlasting shelter that’s actually 30 toes from our residents.”
Members of Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Group offered a slideshow of images shelter neighbors had taken in current weeks, together with footage of littering, unlicensed meals distributors and barbers, and huge gatherings.
Earlier than opening the room to questions, members of the viewers demanded to listen to how their elected officers considered town’s resolution to make the shelter everlasting.
Ald. Desmon Yancy (fifth), state Sen. Robert Peters and state Rep. Curtis Tarver all attended the assembly. Organizers stated additionally they invited Sendy Soto, town’s chief homelessness officer, to attend.
Yancy dedicated to serving to the neighborhood group shut down the Greatest Western shelter. The town’s failure to interact the neighborhood demonstrated a “lack of concern” and a “lack of transparency,” he stated.
Tarver stated he was “annoyed like you might be” and blamed the dearth of communication on “ineptitude on the fifth ground,” referring to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s workplace.
Tarver stated he came upon in regards to the metropolis’s resolution to imagine management of the shelter concurrently his neighbors.
“I stay shut by, I hear about these items from my neighbors and others as effectively,” Tarver added. “You recognize my place is [that] no matter your considerations are, are my considerations.”
Peters stated he had requested Soto’s workplace to put in a video monitor within the neighborhood to handle crime considerations and supply elevated companies to the unhoused individuals and households within the shelter.
Peters’ proposal was drowned out by calls for from the viewers that town shut the shelter moderately than fund its companies.
Opponents of town and state’s defunct migrant shelter program criticized native leaders for serving to migrants, moderately than prioritizing the hundreds of longtime Chicagoans experiencing homelessness.
The Greatest Western shelter has since December served Chicago’s unhoused households no matter immigration standing. The change has finished little to pacify the shelter’s critics, as some attendees Monday continued to middle — and baselessly speculate — about some residents’ immigration statuses.
“We vote for [elected officials] time and time once more, and so they vote for every part for the illegals, and never for us,” one girl stated to some applause. She referred to as on town to encourage migrant deportations.
“We would like them out of right here, interval,” one other man stated to applause.
A couple of neighbors voiced help for the shelter and concern in regards to the bitterness of the dialog, however they have been drowned out by disapproving shouts.
Yancy stated neighbors’ greatest recourse towards town takeover of the shelter was to contextualize the property’s use as a shelter beneath metropolis zoning legislation.
The town’s zoning administrator issued a proper opinion that because the Greatest Western was zoned and licensed for resort use, it may function beneath metropolis contract as a shelter. However neighborhood members may problem that opinion earlier than town’s zoning board of appeals, and Yancy stated his workplace would help that problem.
The town goals to stability the wants of residents on this pocket of Kenwood with neighbors in less-affluent areas, who additionally really feel they bear the brunt of town’s homelessness response, Soto stated in February.
“There are outside encampments and shelters in areas which have been underserved and marginalized for years,” she stated. “They really feel that they’re those which can be having to hold that weight, and we additionally need to undo these harms as a result of the problem of homelessness and housing impacts all of us.”
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