A cluster of more than 20 tents stood at the Gompers Park homeless camp on the Northwest Side Wednesday, a sign that little progress has been made sheltering occupants despite city claims last month that many people were being placed in housing.
Last fall, there were only slightly more tents in the park. It appears that as some people moved out, other moved into Gompers, which has been a symbol of the homelessness challenge in Chicago.
Those staying in the tent camp near North Pulaski Road just south of West Foster Avenue are now being told they have to move ahead of a May 12 deadline to make way for park restorations. Yellow plastic signs, recently tied to trees throughout the park, warn of “Park Property Notice of Enforcement” and say the tents need to be cleared.
In a statement, city officials described the upcoming action on May 12 as a “cleaning event” where tents will be relocated to other parts of the park where there isn’t construction activity, park programming or flooding concerns. But officials did not specify exactly which parts of the 42-acre park the tents can remain.
They say unhoused people move to encampments already receiving services in hopes of also getting housing. Also, there are limited available units on the North Side and Northwest side to place unhoused people.
Some of the newest tents at Gompers are because of construction of a bridge along Foster Avenue that displaced people living nearby, said Monica Dillon, an advocate for the unhoused.
Others still living at the park are waiting for housing on the Northwest Side.
Homeless encampments generally tend to see an increase in residents as the weather starts to warm, Dillon said.
“Every spring we see this uptick,” Dillon said. “People have spent the entire winter in shelters. They look forward to being outside again.”
But Lisa, who asked that her full name not be published, moved to Gompers about two weeks ago after she lost her job and apartment in nearby Albany Park.
Outreach workers have stopped by the encampment to enroll her for housing, but she said she has no idea when she will get keys to an actual apartment.
“I feel like we are the forgotten here,” Lisa said. “A lot of people talk but there’s no action behind it.”
Another woman, who asked not to be identified, wants to get placed in a two-bedroom apartment so she and her partner can live with Lisa.
The woman has lived at Gompers for about two years, staying under the bridge near Foster previously before she was forced to move her tent south.
Another man, who also lived under the bridge, has been in Gompers for two years. He, like others, said he didn’t want to relocate far away, preferring to remain on the Northwest Side.
“Generally all of the southeast area of the park including the lagoon between the tennis courts and the basketball court, the basketball court, the parking lot and the open space around the parking lot and basketball court will be closed to public access for upcoming park improvement projects,” read the warning signs. “No person shall without a permit erect any tent, canopy or other structure without a permit” starting May 12.
Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services overseeing services to people without permanent homes hosted a housing event at Gompers on March 5 — after much lobbying from Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) — and said it connected 27 residents with housing providers. The process can take 30 to 90 days.
“We anticipate the number of residents at Gompers will decline as more [program] participants complete their moves into housing,” department spokeswoman Linsey Maughan said.
On Wednesday, about 15 to 20 city workers emptied trash bins around the encampment. Others removed items — chairs, pieces of wood, rugs and mats — around the tents. Organizers from the Latino Union of Chicago, an Albany Park-based labor organization, passed out coffee.
The southern edge of the park where many encampment residents have ended up overlaps with an area along Pulaski Road where day laborers seek temporary jobs, said Geovanni Celaya, a migrant organizer with the Latino Union of Chicago, on site to talk to people about wage theft. Celaya said organizers worry that day laborers will also get pushed out of this pocket of the park in May.
“Day laborers are continuously being pushed around all of Albany Park and then found themselves right over here in Gompers Park, and they kind of intersected with folks that live here,” Celaya said. “Because many of them are also day laborers.”