Migrants move out of two Oak Park shelters. What’s next for them?
The western suburb has housed 160 migrants since November. Two shelter sites closed this week, but local groups are working to fill the gap.
By Esther Yoon-Ji Kang
Migrants move out of two Oak Park shelters. What’s next for them?
The western suburb has housed 160 migrants since November. Two shelter sites closed this week, but local groups are working to fill the gap.
By Esther Yoon-Ji KangEarlier this week, Sujey, a 32-year-old Venezuelan migrant, chatted with her 6-year-old son as they crossed an Oak Park street on their way home from his school.
“Home” for now is a classroom in an old school building attached to St. Edmund Catholic Church.
Sujey, who asked WBEZ not to use her last name to protect her privacy, wore shorts and a thin jacket in the 30-degree weather. She said she had just moved into the St. Edmund shelter that day, after staying for the past few months at the Carleton Hotel, also in Oak Park.
“Today is our first day. We don’t know how things will go, but at least we have a place to go where we won’t be so cold,” Sujey said in Spanish, adding that she considers it a “blessing” to be in the western suburb. “[Volunteers] have given us support, they have given us good knowledge, and have been helping us little by little.”
Sujey is one of nearly 160 migrants Oak Park has housed at the Carleton, as well as at the West Cook YMCA, since November. The village’s contracts with both locations expired Thursday, but with a $2 million grant from the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, volunteers and leaders have been working quickly to resettle families and provide shelter for those like Sujey and her son who are still looking for more permanent housing.
At the St. Edmund shelter, which is getting $1.24 million of the grant money to house migrants through June 30, old classrooms have been supplied with cots and privacy screens. One room is stocked with toys and books for children, and an eight-stall heated shower truck is parked in a small lot behind the building. The shelter will be run by a newly formed nonprofit called the Oak Park Family Transitional Shelter, led by volunteer executive director Jack Crowe.
He said the facility “is not just a place to sit around. This is a place to work on your transition, to get a job, to find your next house and to get legal support.”
But the shelter, which Oak Park officials say will host about 40 residents, could be short-lived as migrants continue to be resettled with the help of another volunteer-led group called Nuevo Camino.
Brynne Hovde is a member of the group, which also calls itself the resettlement task force and works closely with Oak Park’s faith-based Community of Congregations. The task force provides one year’s worth of rent to landlords, up front, and gives legal consultation to help migrants get work permits. Hovde said volunteers have been working long days to find apartments throughout the Chicago region, sign leases, set up utilities, receive furniture donations and even purchase things like bedsheets and housewares.
So far, given the lack of affordable housing options in Oak Park, the task force has resettled around 80 migrants mostly in other suburbs and different parts of Chicago. In the coming days, they are working to resettle the remaining 40 or so who are staying at St. Edmund. The others, Hovde said, have resettled with the help of other groups or left Oak Park on their own.
She said the $2 million grant comes with restrictions and only $300,000 can go toward rental assistance.
“This has been such a confusing thing for folks in the community because they just see these big numbers — they see $2 million and are like ‘it’s good,’ and we’re like, ‘it’s not good,’ ” Hovde said, adding that the group has had to raise its own funds to help with rent.
Despite the long hours, Hovde said helping migrants is rewarding. She said many migrants have expressed relief at landing in Oak Park as they hear about incidents in Chicago’s shelters. “Obviously they know the headlines and they know that that child died in the shelter,” Hovde said. “They’re very worried for their children.”
For Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman, the migrants’ move-out from the Carleton Hotel and the YMCA represents the end of one chapter for her municipality. She said she is proud of the village — its residents, staff and village trustees — for “mobilizing and supporting the migrant response.” She hopes the St. Edmund program will continue that work until all of the migrants staying there are settled.
Scaman also acknowledged the challenge of responding to an emergency while meeting the governing goals of the village board. “Some of that has a level of urgency for our own residents that it deserves to be prioritized,” Scaman said.
Beyond the 160 migrants who were brought to the village by activists and volunteers on a frigid and snowy Halloween night last year, Oak Park has instituted procedures for redirecting back to Chicago any newcomers who have come to its village hall and other government buildings looking for shelter.
While some trustees have discussed the possibility of building Oak Park’s capacity around housing and social services, others have opposed that idea all along. Trustee Ravi Parakkat said around $20,000 of taxpayer money has been spent per migrant, and those same dollars “could have gone and had a much bigger impact if used differently. Inefficient use of those funds probably has an impact on all of us.”
Esther Yoon-Ji Kang is a reporter on WBEZ’s Race, Class and Communities desk. Follow her on X @estheryjkang.