Mayor Brandon Johnson to shut down migrant shelters, combine with existing homeless system in 2024

Chicago’s migrant shelters will be shut down at the end of the year and absorbed into an existing system for homeless residents, Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a Monday announcement praising his administration for getting past an earlier humanitarian crisis while brushing off concerns of shrinking bed capacity that could lead to more people on the street.

Speaking at a news conference in City Hall, Johnson cast the shift to a unified shelter system covering both asylum seekers and homeless Chicagoans as a victory for fiscal prudence, coordination of resources — and Chicago’s values as a pro-immigrant city.

“We fought back and showed the world just how welcoming we can be,” the mayor said. He told reporters later: “There’s nowhere else on the planet that has been able to stand the test of time in this crisis. You all know what the coverage was a year ago because you all covered it, and to see what we are today tells you everything you need to know about this administration. We don’t cower under pressure.”

Johnson was referring to the grim situation last fall as the newly sworn in mayor and his team were tasked with how to respond to an extraordinary surge of migrant buses from Texas, one that overwhelmed the city’s existing safety net and resulted in hundreds of families camped outside police stations until the start of winter. Those asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, were bused north to Chicago since August 2022 with the support of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who said liberal cities that claim the mantle of being friendly to immigrants should prove it.

Local officials including Johnson condemned Abbott’s strategy, likening it to a cruel political stunt that played with vulnerable people’s lives. But the most trying moments of the Johnson administration’s migrant response tested the resolve of Chicago officials and the promise of a welcoming city for all. In the City Council, Black aldermen at times shed tears or raised voices when discussing the plight of their own communities lacking resources that were being diverted to the asylum seekers.

On Monday, Johnson’s team sought to turn the page on that narrative by looking ahead to the unified system — despite that change coming as resources systemwide are shrinking.

“After taking office, our administration quickly recognized the importance of sharing this responsibility for the migrant mission with all levels of government,” said Beatriz Ponce de Leon, Chicago’s deputy mayor of immigration. “We also understood that the two systems were inequitable, and that we had to work towards one and made the commitment for the one-system initiative.”

The flow of asylum seekers entering the U.S. has also dropped significantly since President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June restricting their ability to do so.

Under the new Chicago set-up that takes effect in January, the city will have 6,800 total beds for homeless people, whether they are new arrivals or not. The current homeless shelter system under the city’s Department of Family and Support Services has 3,000 beds, so the city will add 2,100 while the state will fund 1,700 additional beds.

From now until the transition finishes at the end of December, migrants seeking shelter must have been in the country for no more than 30 days. The landing zone for the new arrivals will no longer stay open overnight and will close permanently in 2025, after which anyone seeking shelter must call 311.

The unification also means no more 60-day eviction policy at Chicago shelters. Currently, migrants are given a 60-day limit at city shelters, but under the one system next year they will join homeless Chicagoans in having no firm exit date.

But there are just under 5,000 migrants living in the city’s asylum seeker shelter system — down from a peak of 15,000 last winter — and the 3,000 existing beds for homeless Chicagoans are usually 97% to 98% full, DFSS Commissioner Brandie Knazze said. That means the unified system may not have room for every migrant or homeless person by 2025 unless more than a thousand of the residents currently in shelters exit by then.

Knazze said the city is well-prepared for that challenge, thanks to the help of rental assistance and other resettlement resources available for those in Chicago’s shelters.

Still, Johnson acknowledged the unified system will be smaller than the two parallel shelter networks operating in the past year.

“Could this lead to people on the street? Look, I’ll be remiss if I did not acknowledge the financial straits that we are experiencing right now and the impact that that’s going to have on this mission,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to see anyone lose, right? But the harsh reality is that we can do what we can afford. We’ve been stretched to the limits. This is why I’m working with our partners at the state to help us, but ultimately, the care has to come from the federal government.”

Chicago has spent more than $540 million on housing and caring for asylum seekers since 2022, most of that going to a contract with Favorite Healthcare Staffing, which hires the workers who man the shelters. Knazze said that vendor will be phased out.

Johnson’s team did not answer questions on what the new system means for his 2025 budget, which has a projected $1 billion gap partially due to the $150 million expenditure on migrant services.

In his Monday appearance, the mayor did repeatedly seek to pin blame for the dearth of resources on “stingy and greedy” corporations who he said opposed his March “Bring Chicago Home” referendum to raise the real estate transfer tax on pricier property sales to fund homelessness services. But overall, Johnson’s mood during the new announcement was celebratory as he argued his administration has indeed proven Abbott and the GOP wrong.

“You know what the Republican Party and extreme right in this country meant for evil, we’ve turned it around and made it of something good,” Johnson said. “That’s who we are as Chicagoans.”