CHICAGO — The strain on Chicago’s resources from a continued influx of migrants was underscored this week when Mayor Lori Lightfoot asked the state for $54 million in emergency funding and her administration confirmed it will open a shelter at a former school in Woodlawn to temporarily house asylum-seekers.
Since the first bus arrived from Texas in the fall, nearly 4,000 asylum-seekers have turned up in Chicago from Texas and another 1,400 from elsewhere. About 1,500 remain in the city’s care, officials said. The city has set up 11 shelters to house, clothe and feed migrants and provide other services, costing the city an estimated $7 million in December alone, Lightfoot wrote in a letter to lawmakers, sent after state officials said they plan to cease financial assistance to the city for the migrants at the end of January.
In the state officials’ letter, leaders from the state’s emergency management and human services offices told the city they “have exhausted all available fiscal resources for the operation of the asylum-seeker mission,” and are requesting more money from the Illinois General Assembly that, if approved, will cover state “costs related to hotels and decompression, the establishment of Intermediate Congregate Housing (ICH) facilities to serve families, and other basic supports for asylum-seekers in ICH and hotel settings through the remainder of State Fiscal Year 2023,” which is June 30.
