CHICAGO (CBS) – Local leaders unveiled details about a proposed plan to merge homeless and immigrant shelters in Chicago and what a unified shelter system might look like.
They called it the One System Initiative. It was designed to streamline how the city serves its homeless community and newly arrived immigrants, all under one comprehensive structure.
Officials unveiled the first phase of the plan Thursday at a community meeting on the Southwest Side, providing a detailed report with recommendations from multiple community organizations on how to approach the new system and offering insight into some of the priorities.
“The goal is to ensure that every family has a safe place to sleep, eat and shower,” said LaShunda Brown of the Primo Center.
At the top of the priority list was how the city would handle intake. Currently, homeless people receive help through the Salvation Army after a request for a bed is made through 311.
Arriving migrants should report to the city’s landing zone as their first point of entry. The report recommended making an entry point available to anyone who needs it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“With our current systems, it can take days for people to get a place in the shelter once they have the numbers and call,” said Ami Novoryta of Catholic Charities.
Opening community-based transition support centers is also a top recommendation, which will focus on providing a variety of resources to residents. Shelter staff was another area of focus, with people with experience of homelessness or asylum seeking on the front lines to guide residents.
More than 48,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August 2022, straining resources and creating tensions and a divide that is widening among the city’s already existing homeless population.
Advocates hoped that equality would become a central point in any plan the city submitted.
“You can’t just take a plate full of food and rearrange it, you have to put more on it,” says Katharine Booton Wilson, CEO of Deborah’s Place.
The new recommendations are now in the hands of city and state officials, who will play a crucial role in the next phase of the plan to get the concept off the ground.
