The countdown has begun for all migrants entering city shelters Friday to find housing within 60 days or be forced to leave under a new rule issued by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Migrants who enter shelters Friday will have to be out by mid-January, according to the mayor’s office.
For more than 12,000 migrants already in city shelters, they will have a little more time before they are ejected. However, all of them will have to leave by early April.
City officials revealed the details of the shelter-stay rule in an announcement Friday, saying the aim was to accelerate “resettlement efforts.”
Nearly 25,000 migrants have been bused or flown to Chicago, mostly from Texas, since August 2022.
Sheltering, feeding and resettling them has been a strain on city resources.
Several thousand migrants found housing through state or other programs or on their own. Thousands more remain in shelters and 2,200 are camped out at police stations and O’Hare Airport.
Migrants leaving shelters who have not found alternative housing will need to ask for placement in another shelter.
For those who were sheltered earlier this year or in 2022, there will be a staggered schedule for departures under Johnson’s new rule.
A group of about 50 who entered city shelters last year will have to leave in mid-January.
Another 3,000 who entered shelters January through July, will have to leave by early February.
Almost 9,000 people who entered between August and Thursday, will depart by the start of April.
Those entering shelters will also not have access to a state rental assistance program, officials announced Thursday.
The moves come as efforts to help migrants find housing haven’t kept pace with the rate of arrivals.
An effort to help migrants get work permits has been slow as well.
Without a work authorization, many in shelters wonder what will happen when they reach the end of their 60 days.
“If the government wants us to be able to rent our own space, we need to be able to work,” said José Valentín, a Venezuelan migrant, staying at a recently-opened West Loop shelter with his partner and their 19-month-old son.
At the shelter, which opened in October and over 1,000 people are staying, he said there were no social services of any kind, from help with housing to their immigration cases.
“We’re waiting for that help, but it hasn’t come yet,” said the 22-year-old.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
