City enforces clearing of Humboldt Park homeless encampment, connects residents with resources

After months of planning and debate, Chicago officials moved to clear a homeless encampment in the city's Humboldt Park, concluding a months-long dispute.

In the aftermath of the clearing, the Humboldt Park Encampment Housing Initiative, led by 26th Ward Ald. Jessie Fuentes, is working to connect unhoused Chicagoans who lived in the encampment with shelter and resources to maintain housing moving forward.

"The solution to homelessness is not tents, it's housing," Fuentes said in a press release about the initiative.

The release also states that "for the first time, an encampment in Chicago is being transitioned into housing-first solutions where every resident in the encampment has been offered housing options that ensure safety, stability, and dignity for all residents."

However, some people who have made their homes in Humboldt Park are frustrated.

Melissa Johnson, who was lived in the park with her fiancé since June of this year, and was aware she would have to make different arrangements due to signs indicating Friday as an enforcement day.

Johnson thought she would have more time, and said her and her fiancé's belongings were discarded by Chicago Park District Staff in an effort to clear the encampment.

"It's even worse," she said, noting this has happened before.

Melissa and her fiancé don't want to live separately, and is currently unsure where they will end up.

"Let's be real, we have a housing crisis. We do not have enough affordable housing," Fuentes said Friday during a press conference.

 "We have hosted three Accelerated Moving Events in Humboldt Park since I have taken office," Fuentes said.

Most recently at an Accelerated Moving Event, the city found housing units for 39 people currently living in the park. Twenty-one people accepted shelter placement while their units become available, and three individuals have moved in with friends and family, according to the city's Department of Family and Support Services.

Fuentes stressed that people who are assigned affordable housing will also have a case worker for two years to help keep them in safe housing.

For anti-homelessness advocates, Friday's enforcement came with concerns.

"As you can see, it's a lot of chaos and people are frustrated. They don't know where they're going to go," Patricia Nix-Hodes of the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness told NBC Chicago.

There's a shelter with 70 rooms available to house people from the park, but it's located in the city's 49th Ward on the Far North Side, and not everyone is open to leaving their community.

"You're just displacing poor people. These are people that are in need of help," community member Nicolas Hernandez said. He believes Ald. Fuentes is doing their best, but doesn't feel displacement is the best option.

Fuentes said currently their office is trying to convince homeowners and Airbnb locations within the ward to work with the city to provide housing options, which would make more affordable units available.

"We're encouraging those landlords to be a part of the process," Fuentes said, also noting that everyone in the park has been given some option of alternative housing.

But until those landlords and Airbnb owners decide to work with the city, those units are not an available solution.

"We don't want individuals sleeping in the cold" Fuentes said.

From what Johnson said, that might be her reality tonight.

"It's not even as cold as it's going to get," Johnson said, looking down at what's left of her belongings.

Park residents were being told Friday afternoon to head to the park's Field House where they would be connected with options for the night and beyond.

"We were speaking with people today who did not know and did not have a plan of where to go," Nix-Hodes said.