Editorial: An uproar in Hyde Park and Kenwood over an old hotel turned into a homeless shelter

Chicago Tribune

06-04-2025

Homelessness in Chicago is a crisis. More housing is needed, and fast, which this page has addressed more than once. But there are few easy answers to the problem in the short run.
On the border of Hyde Park and Kenwood, city officials have provided a stark example of what not to do.
With next to no notice to the affected community, city and state officials decided late last year to make a former Best Western hotel, located amid lakefront high-rises, into a permanent shelter housing up to 750 people.
The shuttered hotel previously was used on an emergency basis to house migrants during the surge that occurred as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was busing Venezuelan and other asylum seekers in large numbers to Chicago. At the time, the idea (or at least the neighborhood assumption) was that once the migrant crisis was past, the use of the hotel for a shelter would end.
Instead, the state of Illinois, which has been operating the Best Western shelter, now plans to transfer it to the city on June 30. Since December, the city and state have worked together to convert this former migrant facility to a homeless shelter.
In February, city officials acknowledged to irate neighbors of the facility that they'd failed to keep the community informed of those plans. It had taken 5th Ward Ald. Desmon Yancy's entreaties on behalf of constituents to make city officials realize 'there was a big, big problem, a big misstep here,' Chicago Chief Homelessness Officer Sendy Soto said back then, according to Block Club Chicago.
Yet another meeting took place March 31, this one attended by more than 200 people, most of them still irate about what they had thought was a temporary shelter apparently becoming permanent.
Yancy promised then to try to close the facility; he suggested community members file a zoning challenge. State Rep. Curtis Tarver, who represents the area and also wants the facility closed, pinned the blame squarely on the mayor, describing the lack of communication and solicitation of community input as 'ineptitude on the fifth floor.'
Where have we heard that before? We're two years into Mayor Brandon Johnson's term and city officials still make amateur mistakes like thinking a 750-person homeless shelter located without warning in a stable, densely populated neighborhood won't generate an uproar. As if to reinforce the community's view that the mayor doesn't care about them, Soto was invited but didn't attend the most recent meeting.
These issues are emotional no matter what. They strike at deep-seated and valid concerns like property values, public safety and orderliness and cleanliness. But let's be real: They also surface prejudices. The people in the Best Western shelter all are families with young children — the most vulnerable homeless population we have.
There's a real debate to be had about what responsibility better-off neighborhoods like Hyde Park have to help solve humanitarian problems that often are laid at the feet of poorer areas. But once you've sown such distrust by appearing to make such a momentous decision a fait accompli, as city officials have done here, engaging in productive dialogue with affected neighbors becomes almost impossible because of lack of trust.
Will this administration ever learn?