CHICAGO — On a rainy afternoon, three young migrant children played inside the gym at St. Paul’s United Church in Lincoln Park. They tossed a ball with a parishioner while their mothers cooked lunch in a kitchen across the hall.
The church’s banquet hall has been converted into four individual rooms to house four recently arrived migrant families, each outfitted with plenty of beds and a door that locks.
It’s a stark contrast to the conditions these four families lived in just two weeks ago, when they were sleeping on cold, hard floors of police stations, relying on the kindness of strangers for an opportunity to shower and anxiously waiting for space to free up in a city-run shelter.
As thousands of asylum seekers seek refuge in Chicago, volunteers in neighborhoods across the city have created community-run shelters to house migrants, often offering better conditions than overburdened city-run shelters.
Since August, more than 10,500 migrants have come to Chicago. About 4,500 people are staying in city-run temporary shelters, and more than 600 are waiting in police stations for shelter space to become available, officials recently said.
People have come from several countries, but a majority are fleeing political and economic upheaval in Venezuela. Many of them were sent to Chicago on buses by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other border-state Republican governors. Some were given free plane tickets to the city by local groups at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The city has opened temporary shelters across the city in response to the growing need, which are all near or at capacity. Migrants and volunteers who work on the front lines with them have said conditions at some city-run temporary shelters are concerning, as people have been served moldy food, don’t have hot water and aren’t allowed to accept donations from neighbors.
Hundreds of others have slept on crowded floors of district police stations, lacking privacy and relying on the kindness of neighbors to provide food, clothes and toiletries.
In addition to St. Paul’s, other North Side churches and a group of Pilsen neighbors have converted spaces into temporary housing for asylum seekers.
RELATED: As Albany Park Church Takes In Migrants, Its Pastor Urges Others In The City To Do The Same
Because they’re connected with existing mutual aid and community groups, neighborhood organizers said they’re positioned to meet asylum seekers’ needs quickly. Several volunteers said they’d like to see the city work with community groups to mimic neighborhood-based shelter efforts so they can get more people off of police-station floors and on the path to self-sufficiency.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s team told the Tribune officials are looking for more permanent housing solutions, which could include seeking community-based proposals to cut down on staffing costs. The city is also hoping for financial help from the state and federal government so migrants settling in Chicago can be matched with rental assistance and access work permits faster, mayoral representatives said.
With so much need, volunteers running community-based shelters said the limitations of how many families they can help can be discouraging, but every family housed makes a difference.
“You get discouraged, the times when you say, ‘I’m only helping 14 people when there are hundreds of thousands of people in a similar situation.’ But I think you have to kind of shift that lens a little bit, and say you’re helping 14 people instead of zero,” said David Brown, a parishioner who’s been coordinating St. Paul’s housing efforts.
“And if you can help other churches help 5, 10 or 15 people, it will multiply.”
‘There’s A Lot Of People Who Can Step Up’
Outside a warehouse-turned-shelter in Pilsen last week, newly arrived migrants were milling about on the sidewalk, eating lunch provided by a local restaurant. Some rode bikes around the block while others tended a small garden out front.
The warehouse was retrofitted into a temporary shelter last month, and it can now house more than 200 people, volunteers said. It grew out of an effort by Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th)and community organizers to move families out of the 12th District police station, which had nearly 100 people staying there.
Almost immediately, neighbors jumped in to help with donation drives and fundraising efforts, providing meals, mattresses, hygiene products, children’s clothes and even free haircuts.
The shelter has been dubbed Todo Para Todos — which means “everything for everyone” in Spanish.
Kathleen Murphy, one of the dozens of volunteers working around the clock for the past five weeks, said their community-run shelter serves as a model that can be replicated in neighborhoods across the city.
“There are warehouses like this all over,” Murphy said.
One of the biggest differences between the community-run shelter in Pilsen and a city-run shelter is the level of care neighbors provide and the freedom that is allowed, she said.
At the city-run shelters, “you can’t have monthly birthday parties for everybody who has a birthday in May, and you can’t have movie nights because somebody happens to text message in the chat that they’re available and have the Super Mario movie in Spanish and would like to screen it in our warehouse,” Murphy said.
David Pisor, a partner with etta Collective, is part of a coalition of groups who provide food to the Pilsen shelter. At least once a week since last month, Pisor and his partners bring lunch or dinner from their Gold Coast restaurant Cafe Sophie.
Pisor said the restaurant industry is in a unique position to help.
“There’s about 8,200 restaurants in Chicagoland — there’s a lot of people who can step up and help out,” he said.
The Pilsen warehouse has been fitted with showers, a makeshift clinic and a community closet, Murphy said. People staying there have their own air mattresses, she said.
Migrants staying there are welcome to stay as long as they need help. As much as volunteers want to help people move on and allow new folks in, it can often take months to find someone permanent housing, she said.
“For now, the group that we have is the group that we have,” she said. “And believe me, we’ve got people who want to come, and we don’t have space. And it breaks our hearts.”
Keeping the community effort going costs money. Even with an tremendous outpouring of financial support and time commitment from neighbors, odo Para Todos volunteers are applying for state funding and have an active GoFundMe so people can donate.
“We can do this from resources on the grounds and through a grassroots mobilization effort, and also we need funding to sustain it,” she said.
With a little over a month of running the Pilsen shelter under their belts, Murphy and other volunteers said they’re still learning what works and what doesn’t.
There’s operational and decision-making challenges volunteers are working through, but Murphy said people who have the drive to create something similar — whether in an another empty warehouse or something else — should jump at the chance to help.
“I hate to be one of those guys who’s like, ‘You just need to do it.’ But you kind of just need to get in there and do it,” she said.
‘This Is The Long Term Solution’
Ben Emmrich, president of the church council at St. Paul’s, said parishioners were bringing hot meals and offering laundry services to migrants staying at the Near North (18th) and Town Hall (19th) district police stations before the church moved families into the church.
Establishing relationships with the families was pivotal to gaining people’s trust and best understanding what their needs were, Emmrich said.
Once St. Paul’s identified four families interested in moving in, they coordinated with Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd), whose ward covers Lincoln Park, and put a call out for donations, Emmrich said.
St. Paul’s originally wanted to house more people, but it was unclear if the city would be able to provide the funding or staffing the church would have needed, Emmrich said.
“We erred on the side of going forward with a sustainable number of people that we knew the church could largely support on its own,” Emmrich said.
With parish dollars, St. Paul’s was also able to hire Brown, also a local developer, as a project manager to help oversee operations at the makeshift shelter.
“This congregation said, ‘Okay, we’re ready to help now,'” Brown said. “Our approach was — if we can help four families, we’re gonna go ahead and move now. And it was a beautiful thing to see.”
Emmrich and Brown said it was important to them to support these families on a path to independence as best as possible, and that began with living quarters that offer agency.
The nearby Steppenwolf Theater donated old stage sets, which St. Paul’s converted into walls for four rooms inside their banquet hall. Each room has a locking door, with showers, bathrooms, laundry and a kitchen just down the hall.
“God gave us this big building — we might as well put it to use,” Emmrich said.
Pastor Beth Brown — no relation to David Brown — at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church, 600 W. Fullerton Parkway, is another faith leader who’s opened up space for families previously staying at a police station. The church recently converted a meeting room into space for a second family, after hosting one family in their private quarters.
“We should really be taking this effort citywide,” Beth Brown said. “If enough faith communities stepped up, we could get everybody housed. Our effort makes so much more sense. This is the long-term solution.”
Thanks to state funding, she said her church is expecting the money will help them hire a program manager and case workers.
These people could be resources to other community partners who are taking in asylum seekers, she said.
Beth Brown said she wants to help others learn their model. The church is planning to host training sessions for faith partners who may have the space to house people and the desire to help but need some guidance, Beth Brown said.
“Our challenge right now is really getting the word out and getting people to understand they won’t be alone,” she said.
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