Mayor Brandon Johnson considers housing a “fundamental human right.” It’s a belief shaped by the fact that his own brother died, as he puts it, “addicted and unhoused.”
That’s why the $40 million investment Johnson announced Wednesday to modernize and “dignify” the city’s network of homeless shelters was so personal to Chicago’s mayor.
With 750 permanent shelter beds in seven neighborhoods slated to become fully accessible, Johnson called it “the most significant step forward in the history of Chicago in our mission to make housing a human right.”
That’s in part because the investment will help create more than 350 so-called “noncongregate beds” so unhoused individuals and families have private sleeping rooms, bathrooms and secure storage space to keep their personal belongings.
The new round of investments are “grounded in lessons learned from the pandemic,” Johnson said.
That’s when Mayor Lori Lightfoot unveiled a plan she called a national model to ease the strain on overburdened hospitals: Rent thousands of rooms in empty Downtown hotels and reopen a shuttered hospital to isolate patients who test positive for COVID-19, or have been exposed to someone who has. In all, five hotels provided 3,000 beds.
“Research shows that noncongregate shelter settings that offer privacy improve both health and housing outcomes for residents compared to congregate shelter settings,” Johnson told a news conference at St. Leonard’s Ministries, 2100 W. Warren Blvd.
“This is an investment for a healthier, safer and more private accessible facilities, because everyone — everyone — deserves dignity and housing and in shelters,” Johnson said.
Maura McCauley, acting commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services, recalled working with a host of shelter partners during the pandemic to overcome “fear and uncertainty about how we would keep shelter residents and staff healthy and safe in … congregate spaces that didn’t allow people to safely social distance or isolate.”
“With the support of medical partners and much innovation, the shelter network implemented measures, including the use of hotels for isolation and other alternate shelters, which had a profound impact,” McCauley said. “It seems obvious, in retrospect, that the dignity of an individual’s room and a bathroom would lead to positive health and housing outcomes — and it did. We came out of that effort with evidence, a vision and will for shelter improvements, and fortunately, the funding and technical assistance followed.”
The $40 million Shelter Infrastructure Initiative will be bankrolled by $20 million in federal funds and $20 million in city bond funding. It’s the largest investment ever made to modernize Chicago’s shelter infrastructure for the unhoused in the city’s history, Johnson’s team said.
Another $30 million in city borrowing will be used to “acquire and rehabilitate” even more “noncongregate shelters” and turn more than 300 beds in group settings to private rooms.
Robret Sparkman-Simpson is executive director of Franciscan Outreach, which operates four Chicago shelters that together served more than 3,500 people last year. The organization’s mission is to provide “shelter care and pathways to permanent housing” for vulnerable residents by “meeting them with dignity” and “wraparound” services.
Sparkman-Simpson called Johnson’s plan “the first step toward renovating” her organization’s largest shelter. Its 235 shelter beds — complete with “trauma-informed, wraparound services” and case management — served 1,097 residents last year.
“Unfortunately, in that space, our guests do not have a dining room,” Sparkman-Simpson said. “This funding will provide a space for people to eat sitting down. Sounds crazy, right?”
Critical infrastructure repairs at the shelter will include a new roof, upgraded ventilation systems and dramatically upgraded heating and air-conditioning systems to replace portable air-conditioning units.
Dormitory upgrades include moving the women’s dorm “into the front of the shelter” to avoid the “traumatic experience” of having to “walk through the men’s dorm to get to their resting area,” Sparkman-Simpson said. So-called “isolation rooms” will be set up to “provide medical respite or short-term care” for residents who now have to be turned away.
“These renovations aren’t just about bricks and mortar. They are about restoring hope in the people that we serve,” she said.
Johnson’s so-called One System Initiative merged migrant shelters and city shelters into a single network.
The mayor would have $100 million more each year to spend on reducing homelessness if he had succeeded in raising the transfer tax on high-end property sales. Chicago voters overwhelmingly rejected the “Bring Chicago Home” referendum, and Johnson has, so far, been unwilling to try again.