Gold Coast hotel for homeless sees last residents depart

Amy Barney hauled carts of her belongings — a pink cowboy hat, bags of clothes and an electric piano — out to a white van driven by Street Samaritans, who stepped up to help her move from a Gold Coast city-run shelter to her own Woodlawn apartment.

“There’s been so much anxiety over this move,” said the 48-year-old known to many on the streets as “Coffee.” But finally, after years of “being outside” all over the country, she’d have an address.

Barney, who previously lived at an encampment at 16th and Union streets, was among the last remaining residents at the Tremont at 100 E. Chestnut St., most recently known as the Selina Hotel. The city was expected on Sunday to permanently close the hotel shelter, popular in part for its individual rooms.

As Barney waited for her ride Friday morning, she wondered if she would feel lonely in her new place, if she would be able to fall asleep during her first night and what she would eat.

“I hope I can get my head together,” said Barney, who’d eventually like to get a trailer and settle in Florida.

The city used the Tremont as a temporary option for people moved out of a large and highly visible “tent city” ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

At the Tremont, 12 residents still have no housing plan, Department of Family and Support Services spokesman Brian Berg told the Chicago Sun-Times, so they will be moved to other shelters.

Residents were told they could only take two bags of items with them before getting keys to new apartments because of shelter limits, Barney said. She added that some people also balked at the criminal background and credit checks needed to secure apartments.

The former Tremont shelter residents can’t go to the encampment sandwiched between South Desplaines Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway, just north of Roosevelt Road, since city officials blocked it off last month with a 10-foot-tall fence to the tune of $814,000 in “emergency” spending that horrified homeless advocates.

The Tremont shelter housed 53 people who had been living in various tent encampments across the city. More than half of the people living in the shelter this summer were from the Desplaines site.

Out of that group, 41 have been placed in more long-term housing, Berg said, as part of the city’s “housing first” approach that connects people without homes with counseling as well as a place to live.

Barney said she was given one of the “care packages” with an air mattress and sheets plus pots for her South Side apartment. She won’t have to worry about the first few months of rent, but after that she will have to figure out how to pay it herself.

In July, more than half a dozen people told the Sun-Times they had been thrown out of the Tremont shelter as the city made room for people coming from the encampments.

DFSS had contracted for just 60 beds at the Tremont in the summer, down from 116 during the winter months.

The city paid a vendor, Equitable Social Solutions, more than $6.5 million to operate the shelter from November to June — about $820,000 a month, Berg said. Then officials allocated $2.5 million more to keep the shelter open through mid-September, while they worked with residents to find permanent housing, Berg said.

“We extended the closing to September 15th to support smooth transitions to housing and to allow our teams adequate time to secure new shelter placement for anyone that was not connected to housing or awaiting lease start dates,” Berg said.

His department plans to solicit bids this fall for a “year-round hotel-based shelter program” providing private rooms like at Tremont “for people experiencing homelessness, with the goal to begin the program and operations in early 2025.”

Barney hoped the move would mark a break from the fight-or-flight that has been at the center of her life as she’s faced the daily challenge of where to sleep at night.

Maybe, she said, once in her own dedicated space, she’ll “be OK in a world that hasn’t let me be OK.”