UKRAINIAN VILLAGE — Two neighbors of a proposed migrant shelter in Ukrainian Village are suing Mayor Brandon Johnson and other city officials to at least temporarily stop the plan from moving forward.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court, James Cole and Danielle Roberts argue the city has illegally skirted zoning and building permit regulations to convert a privately owned building at 526 N. Western Ave. into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers.
The city has established more than two dozen temporary brick-and-mortar shelters for migrants while moving forward with controversial plans to build winterized tent encampments to shelter thousands of people during colder months.
Officials announced this month the building on Western Avenue would house up to 200 migrants. Construction is underway to retrofit the facility, which is expected to open by Wednesday.
Madison Savedra discusses the city’s tent encampment plan:
Since August 2022, more than 19,000 migrants have come to Chicago, many of them bused here by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration. The number of new arrivals surged over the summer, as thousands more people streamed into the city on buses and planes.
City officials have repeatedly said a disaster proclamation issued last year by Gov. JB Pritzker in response to the influx of asylum seekers allows flexibility to relax zoning rules for temporary shelters — something the lawsuit disputes and is asking the court to rule on.
Cole and Roberts own homes near the building and argue the decision to open the shelter violates their due process rights to weigh in on the proposal, according to the lawsuit. They are demanding the city withdraw its plans to open the facility until officials can fully comply with existing zoning and construction laws, according to the lawsuit.
Besides Johnson, buildings Commissioner Matthew Beaudet, acting planning Commissioner Patrick Murphey and building owner Candy Mountain LLC are named as defendants in the suit.
Kristen Cabanban, a spokesperson for the city’s Law Department, declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday, citing pending litigation. Cole and Roberts declined to comment through their attorney, Neal McKnight.
‘There’s No Control In Place’
The Ukrainian Village facility has been met with vocal support and intense opposition since it was formally announced in mid-October.
One point of backlash was the city’s initial plan to house single men in the shelter. During a contentious community meeting Oct. 12, some neighbors raised concerns the surrounding area — home to Smith Park and several schools — would be better suited to families.
The city changed course this week. Deputy Mayor Beatriz Ponce de León wrote in a letter to Villegas the shelter would now house families with children, not single men.
Cole and Roberts argue the Western Avenue shelter is not “compatible with the character of the surrounding area” and will have a “significant adverse impact on the general welfare of the neighborhood.”
The building is zoned for a neighborhood commercial district, which does not allow for the operation of a temporary or transitional shelter without special use approval, according to zoning law. The city has not issued any such permit through the Zoning Board of Appeals, according to the lawsuit.
Because the Johnson administration has not gone through the standard city review process, which includes holding a community meeting and an option to testify in front of a city board, the city has “deprived” neighbors of their legal rights to give input on the shelter, according to the lawsuit.
“Really the big problem is that there’s no control in place,” McKnight said in an interview Thursday. “You know, we don’t know how many bathrooms are there. We don’t know how many showers are going to be there.”
The complaint also argues a lack of building permits issued during renovations of the facility endangers the block and neighborhood and lowers property values.
City records show the building has not been issued any construction permits since October 2007. When a Block Club reporter visited the property this week, no permits or other signs were affixed to the building, although construction noise could be heard coming from inside.
“When properties are adjacent to properties of poor and unsafe construction, it lowers the value of surrounding properties,” according to the lawsuit.
Ultimately, the lawsuit’s backers hope a court will decide how the Johnson administration can interpret the governor’s disaster proclamation and whether they can legally open temporary shelters without following zoning and construction rules, McKnight said.
“Really what we’re asking the court to decide is: Does the governor mean that we’re going to suspend the zoning regulations or the building code or whatever else you want to apply to it?” McKnight said. “Our position is that if the governor had meant to do that, the governor would have put it in the emergency proclamation or entered an executive order.”
The Mayor’s Office did not return a request for comment. At the Ukrainian Village community meeting, officials cited the disaster order to explain why the city does not need to follow established protocols for opening buildings when launching a temporary shelter.
“In this moment, because we’re working on this as a crisis moment, the zoning is OK for what we’re doing,” Ponce de León said at the meeting.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, used the same rationale this week after a Brighton Park neighbor asked how a planned tent encampment could be built on a site zoned for manufacturing.
“The governor has issued an emergency declaration. That is because we are certainly in an emergency, and therefore it affords flexibility,” Pacione-Zayas said, reiterating that position during a press briefing Thursday.
‘This Administration Has Just Not Been As Transparent’
As local leaders struggle to house people — often getting no warning when more buses and planes arrive in the city — the crisis increasingly is stoking frustrations among neighbors.
In predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides, some neighbors have rebuked the city for dedicating resources to migrants while their own communities suffer from decades of disinvestment.
In Brighton Park, a proposal to house up to 2,000 migrants in tents has garnered fierce backlash. Tensions escalated last week during a protest where some people attacked Ald. Julia Ramirez (12th) and an aide, who was brought to the hospital.
Neighbors and alderpeople have blasted City Hall for not informing them about plans to establish shelters, sometimes not hosting community meetings until days before a shelter opened.
Ramirez has said she was not consulted by the Mayor’s Office before the city decided to assess the site to shelter migrants, a frustration Villegas echoed this week when discussing the Ukrainian Village facility.
“The one frustration that myself and my colleagues have had around this whole issue is the lack of transparency, the lack of communication. We were having to find out and then ask to affirm whether or not what we’re hearing is true, and it shouldn’t be that way,” Villegas told Block Club on Tuesday. “This administration has just not been as transparent around this issue.”
Ponce de León addressed that in her letter to Villegas, saying Johnson advised alderpeople in September that shelter information would not always be quickly available.
“The mayor also forewarned that due to the fluid nature of this endeavor, and the high number of new arrivals coming to the city daily, timelines for opening or expanding shelters in respective wards will likely be short with little notice,” Ponce de León wrote. “He acknowledged the potential frustration expressed by constituents and pressure it will present on alderpersons, however the city cannot control the increase of buses with new arrivals nor the impact on current residence and services, and the consequences of inaction or delay are greater for the safety and security of new arrivals and the people of Chicago.”
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