Chicago residents slam ‘hypocrite’ lawmakers over plans to house 300 new migrants in hotels while city’s majority-black homeless population is left to suffer on streets
Chicago’s plan to turn a Hyde Park hotel into a shelter for 300 migrants has angered locals. They pointed out during a controversial meeting on Wednesday that many local homeless people had to sleep on the street.
Chicago has seen 11,000 migrants arrive in the city since August 2022, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas said in late June.
Many of them were bussed from the US-Mexico border by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
He has sent 30,000 people to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles, in a protest he says will end when President Joe Biden “secures the border.”
Chicago, like the other cities, is struggling to cope with the influx.
Migrants in Chicago have been housed in the city’s police stations since April, as well as other city-owned buildings.
A meeting was held in Hyde Park on Wednesday evening to discuss the hotel in their neighborhood for migrants
Migrants will be housed in the Chicago Lake Shore Hotel in the Hyde Park neighborhood
The photo shows migrants leaving El Paso, Texas on a bus near Border Patrol headquarters
A migrant child poses outside the 18th District Police Station on Chicago’s North Side on Wednesday
On Wednesday, Desmon Yancy, the councilor representing the Hyde Park district, called a meeting to discuss plans to turn the Chicago Lake Shore Hotel into a shelter, telling the excited crowd that he had only just heard about the plan.
βI was absolutely furious, and you guys are so hypocritical,β one woman told the assembled aldermen. CBS news.
Another woman complained at the meeting that the local homeless β the vast majority of whom are black β were not getting help.
“You have that 73 percent of the homeless people in this city are black people,” she said. “What have you done for them?”
The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless said in their 2023 report that 68,440 people were homeless β a 4.5 percent increase from last year.
The city says 6,500 migrants are currently being housed in the city’s 16 reception centers.
Andre Vasquez, chairman of the city council committee on immigrant and refugee rights, told the meeting that he sympathized with their concerns
The goal is to get the migrants out of police stations with overcrowded lobbies, CBS reported.
Andre Vasquez, chairman of the city’s Immigration and Refugee Rights Commission, told the meeting that he sympathized and understood their frustrations.
“I understand exactly the sentiment,” he said.
βWhat I’m telling you is we all live in the same city, so we all know that the black community hasn’t made as much investment; has not had that support.’
City officials told the community at the rally that some migrants have been housed at the hotel since the spring.
Now the entire property will be taken over by migrants.
Emmanuel Jackson told CBS he was angry that his community had not been notified.
“I think it’s a fundamental issue of notice and respect,” he said.
“If these kinds of big changes are made in the community we live in, we should be aware of it.”
Emmanuel Jackson (pictured) told CBS he was angry his community had not been notified of the proposal for the hotel
The rally in Chicago took place the day before New York City Mayor Eric Adams held a rally demanding that the Biden administration allow refugees and asylum seekers to work and pay taxes.
‘Let them work! Give them the opportunity to contribute to our society,” Adams said at a gathering at Foley Square in lower Manhattan.
He said that if they worked, they would be able to earn a living and fill vacant positions.
βWe say we need to expedite work visas. It’s just common sense. Thousands of jobs are available to be filled,” he said.
Our resources are not endless.
βThe solution isn’t just in New York City. The solution is New York State and the United States.β
Of the 107,000 migrants who have arrived since last year, nearly 60,000 are still in the city’s care.
The new arrivals have pushed the number living in city-run shelters to a record 115,000.
Eric Adams led a rally on Wednesday calling on the Biden administration to help the city deal with the migrant crisis
The New York City mayor called on the White House to expedite work visas for asylum seekers and “give them the opportunity to contribute to our society”
New York City now manages more than 200 sites and humanitarian aid centers, at a cost of $5 billion this year β as much as its parks, fire, and sanitation budgets combined.
Adams said earlier this week that New York City would be allowed to move migrants to other parts of the state β something the state governor refuses to consider.
‘We have no option. New York City is out of space,” Adams said.
“We’re going to use every available space to ease the pressure on New York City residents.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul met with senior members of the Biden administration at the White House on Wednesday to lobby for migrants’ permission to work and discuss federal support for migrants’ healthcare, education and housing .
She called the two-hour meeting “productive,” but “not enough to fully address this crisis.”