Mayor Brandon Johnson announces $40 million to upgrade Chicago's homeless shelters

Chicago Tribune

7 days ago

Tania Navarrete welcomes a group of city employees to her new apartment on the South Side. She guides them through the living room and bedroom and then into her kitchen. Art lines the walls and the fridge is fully stocked with food.
The employees, on a 'special assignment' for the day, are with the city's Homeless Outreach and Prevention team. They helped Navarrete find and move into the new apartment about a month ago. The 33-year-old had lived for about three years inside a tent at the contentious Gompers Park homeless encampment after being evicted from her apartment.
'It's so comfortable here compared to the park,' Navarrete told the Tribune. 'So much problems over there. I better stay here.'
The group of four employees made a quick stop at Navarrete's apartment last week to check in and bring her supplies, including food, bedding and a new toy for her black cat, Tinkerbell, a stray that Navarrete picked up at Gompers. The team spends their days building trust with many of the more than 7,000 people across the city experiencing homelessness. The goal is to help them rebuild and improve their lives.
Navarrete is a success story, a bright spot in a system plagued with inequities and community pushback. But success stories take time and require resources, Luis Santiago, a community intervention specialist said. And there's two resources he said he's lacking most in his job — affordable units, particularly on the Northwest Side, and quality shelter space. The city combined its migrant and homeless shelters, called the 'One System Initiative,' to mixed success.
'Shelter space is so tight right now because of One System,' Santiago said. 'We just need more shelter, and that takes funding.'
In a step toward that goal, Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Department of Family & Support Services announced Wednesday a $40 million investment to 'modernize' homeless shelters throughout the city, calling it the 'largest local shelter capital investment in Chicago's history.'
Seven shelters received provisional grants, according to DFSS. Citywide the department hopes to improve around 750 permanent shelter beds, increase Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility and create 350 beds in private rooms citywide, a news release said, citing research that shows noncongregate shelters improve health and housing outcomes.
'Overall, this is an investment for healthier, safer and more private and more accessible facilities,' Johnson said at a news conference at Saint Leonard's House, a grant recipient that provides interim housing for formerly incarcerated men on the Near West Side.
'This investment spans across the city to seven shelters on the North, South and West sides of our city so that residents experiencing homelessness can find quality shelters wherever they are,' Johnson added.
Half of the money for the program will come from federal funding, specifically the HOME Investment Partnerships American Rescue Plan Program, DFSS said. The other $20 million will come from locally issued bond funds. Meanwhile, the city faces a more than $1 billion anticipated deficit for 2026, a major pending union contract and other budget challenges.
'We are facing a budget dilemma, but we can fix it,' Johnson told a group of shelter officials at a roundtable Wednesday. 'We just have to have the political will … What I don't want is this zero sum where we have to cut services and find these so-called efficiencies that end up leading to closures.'
Shelter operators said the money is long overdue and will be put to good use. Ivory Snow, chief administrative officer for Saint Leonard's Ministries, said the nonprofit plans to use the grant to install air-conditioning, convert shared spaces into about 40 private bedrooms and add ADA accessible bathrooms.
'Allowing for peace and privacy and dignity, just being able to go to your own room and if I need to chill and have a moment and kind of process today, our residents will be able to do that,' Snow said.
At a Franciscan Outreach shelter, executive director Robret Simpson said they recently had to evacuate when temperatures climbed above 90 degrees. They want to use the grant money to install air-conditioning, she said. They also plan to move the women's dorm so female residents don't have to walk through the men's dorm, as well as build a dining room.
'Our guests stand up to eat in 10 minute increments with partitions, because that's what we have to do,' Simpson said. 'It's creating a space where we are matching not just what we're trying to do in services with the space that they're existing in, but also creating a better hope for a population that we all know has been historically disconnected from that feeling.'
'So for us, it's life-changing,' she added.
A Garfield Park transitional home run by Inner Voice plans to install a lift to bring people to the first floor and install an accessible bathroom, said Jackie Edens, the group's president and the city's former director of homeless services.
'ADA accessibility is also beyond just mobility, but it's about vision and hearing too,' she said. 'So that was all taken into account. A lot of these architectural plans, the renderings were being thought of, so (we are) trying to be holistic in our approach to serving people with any kind of disability.'
People with disabilities — which make up about 19% of the adult homeless population — have long expressed concerns about the lack of accessible shelter space. A number of lawsuits have been filed against the city accusing the shelter system of failing to provide accommodations mandated by federal law.
Iliana Rivera Haven, a housing community organizer with the disability rights group Access Living, which is part of several lawsuits, said in a statement that the city has denied people with disabilities access to its shelters for decades and that 'any investment in ADA compliance to correct that problem is a win for the people of Chicago.'
'That said, even though we have been fighting for accessibility for years, this announcement was surprising news to us and to our allies working to end homelessness — we've received no details on the city's plans or how this investment will address long-standing barriers,' Rivera Haven said. 'Advocates with lived experience would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the city to ensure this funding delivers real change for disabled Chicagoans experiencing homelessness.'
Doug Schenkelberg, executive director for the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, said the organization supports Johnson's efforts to 'create safer, more dignified spaces for unhoused Chicagoans, particularly at a time when the federal government is poised to abandon housing investments and embrace racist policy choices.'
'It is crucial for the city, state and federal governments to pair investments in shelter with more permanent solutions — housing with supportive services — so all Chicagoans have a safe place to call home,' Schenkelberg said.