CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Chicago’s unhoused population has tripled over the past year, escalating an issue that is nothing new but that has spiked as the city prepares to host next week’s Democratic National Convention.
The city has closed two of 11 total tent encampments in the past month as part of an ongoing campaign to find shelter for those sleeping on city streets or in other public spaces.
Chicago’s Point-In-Time Count placed the city’s unhoused population at 18,836. However, the Chicago Coalition To End Homelessness’ estimate report last summer says that as of 2021, more than 68,400 people were experiencing homelessness.
In response, the city permanently closed its largest tent community near the Dan Ryan Expressway in July. Brandie Knazze, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Family Support Services, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the move was preventative to avoid the Secret Service uprooting residents without homes.
More recently, the city has cleared several other smaller encampments as part of an effort to move the city’s homeless people into more permanent housing.
“It’s not like, ‘(The DNC) is coming, so let’s move these folks,’” Brian Berg, the DFSS spokesman, told NewsNation this week. “It’s not like we’re going to stop serving these residents in the encampments and shelters when the convention is over. It’s a continuous process.”
Organizations that have pushed for homeless encampment closures understand how the timing appears.
“I think an encampment closure gets a dirty reputation, but ultimately, organizations like mine want to close every encampment because we want there to be no homelessness in Chicago,” Shiloh Capone, executive director of Street Samaritans, told NewsNation.
“And that means there will be no more encampments. What we don’t want is just a displacement where folks are forced to leave where they’re at without housing support.”
Chicago’s homeless on the move
Berg said that this summer, 60 people were moved as part of the encampment closures. Of those, 48 accepted shelter assignments. Since 2020, the city has moved 898 homeless residents from tent communities into permanent housing, benefiting 2,800 households.
As part of that plan, the city has invested almost $70 million in federal CARES and American Rescue Plan Act funding, Berg said.
But Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition To End Homelessness, opposes the closures unless those being moved are given access to permanent housing.
“Until there is sufficient permanent housing for everyone living on the street, CCH objects to (the) permanent closure of spaces for people who have no place else to go,” Schenkelberg told NewsNation.
Where do Chicago’s tent residents land?
Scott Holsinger lived in one of the recently closed tent communities for seven months after moving to Chicago in January. The divorced former truck driver landed in a former boutique hotel in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
Since November, the former Tremont Hotel has housed more than 100 homeless people as part of a $6.5 million city contract, the Sun-Times reported. Sixty hotel rooms are used for housing for homeless people awaiting permanent housing.
“It’s just a waiting game,” Holsinger told NewsNation this week while waiting to meet with his assigned caseworker. “It’s really a hassle, but you just got to take it day-by-day and see what happens.”
Some living in tent communities felt forced out. However, as part of the city’s plan, those who are moved by the city are given advanced notice and are also provided with shelter options and housing vouchers.
“They just want to get people off the streets,” Holsinger said. “That’s (the city’s) main goal, but you still have a bunch of people on the streets that (the city) isn’t doing anything about.”
DNC casts a spotlight on homelessness
Much of Chicago’s homelessness hike since 2023 can be attributed to migrants arriving from the southern border. As of last year, the city’s Point-In-Time tracker included only 6,139 unsheltered residents.
The city does not track where migrants land once they leave the shelters, but many end up on the street or in tents, sources have told NewsNation. Those unable to afford housing can return to Chicago’s landing zone and reenter the system to be placed back in migrant shelters.
Yet many of the migrants strike out on their own. They’re forced to sleep where they can and fend for themselves.
Along Michigan Avenue, where banners for the DNC hang from light poles, women sit outside with their children outside high-end storefronts with cardboard signs, asking for help while they pitch candy and bottled water or shake plastic cups asking for spare change.
The city considers the new arrivals among Chicago’s growing unhoused population at a time when the border crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border remains among the hottest political issues that could factor into November’s election.
However, in a city that lacks enough affordable housing and leads the nation in annual rent increases, some community leaders said the issue extends beyond new arrivals.
West Loop Community Organization President Julie Darling says the system to address homelessness in Chicago is broken. While she appreciates the city’s efforts to move people off the streets, it’s not enough, she said.
“Once (homelessness) becomes unmanageable and unsafe, it becomes a public health and safety issue,” Darling said.
Darling believes finding homeless solutions should be a bigger priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson. And as the Democrats in Chicago, the coronation for presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris offers a prime opportunity for more attention to be paid to the issue, local groups say.
In a survey conducted by Street Samaritans, a large number of respondents cited rising rents as the reason they ended up on the streets. While homelessness may not be part of the DNC agenda, offering better solutions should be for the host city, the group’s director says.
“Homelessness is going to exist in Chicago after Joe Biden leaves and after Kamala Harris leaves,” Capone said. “The DNC isn’t going to be the end of what our unhoused community members are experiencing, but it may be the end of people caring about what our unhoused community members are experiencing, and that saddens me deeply.”
