Chicago officials on Friday carried out a months-old plan to clear away the city’s biggest homeless encampment after moving some residents into apartments and offering most of the others shelter beds.
Ridding Humboldt Park of the sprawling encampment has been a priority of Ald. Jessie Fuentes, 26th Ward, since shortly after her election last year. But, unlike homeless removals of Chicago’s past, this effort was focused on providing apartments to most of the tent dwellers.
“This really demonstrates this collective effort between the city of Chicago and the alderman’s office,” Sendy Soto, the city’s chief homelessness officer, said at a Friday news conference. “Every single person has had all of their needs met.”
No matter how noble the goals, there were difficult moments Friday.
Around 8 a.m., a father and mother from the central Venezuelan city of Valencia scrambled to get the older of their two children to school before returning to the park to move all their belongings from a tent near the park’s western edge into their car. The couple, who asked that their names not be published, told WBEZ they had been living in the park for three months and were eager for shelter beds.
After packing up, they waited in the car and left the tent standing in hopes of attracting the attention of city staffers who would connect them to a shelter. But none arrived.
While the Venezuelans were waiting, Park District personnel took their tent to the garbage. Reached hours later by WBEZ, the father said he did not know where they would sleep Friday night. By mid-afternoon, the family was in touch with city officials working on their shelter placement.
Until a couple months ago, the encampment in Humboldt Park had roughly 90 tents, most of them occupied, according to the city. The encampment was more than three times bigger than the next largest Chicago tent city, according to a city count obtained by the Sun-Times through a request under Illinois’ open-records law.
Some nearby homeowners have pointed to safety and health concerns and pushed the city to clear tents from the park. Other neighbors have focused on providing food and necessities to the tent occupants.
Last month, the city posted “Notice of Enforcement” signs around Humboldt Park, warning that overnight presence and unpermitted tents would not be allowed after Friday at 9 a.m. City crews in recent days stepped up efforts to remove tents that were unoccupied.
Fuentes on Friday said the city had moved 39 residents into apartments and was working on apartments for 24 others. The city is offering shelter beds to about two-dozen others. At least one couple is lined up for a hotel room.
Starting around 9 a.m., city social workers fanned out into the park to meet with the remaining residents. Park District crews swept up tents and belongings into dump trucks.
Porfirio Elliott, 49, and his partner Melissa, 48, arrived in the park around 10 a.m. after their daily walk to the methadone clinic. Profiled on Wednesday by WBEZ, Porfirio and Melissa had been crashing with an acquaintance.
Back in the park Friday morning, Porfirio said that arrangement had ended. The couple was planning to collect their tent and belongings and move to a homeless encampment in Gompers Park a few miles north. But they arrived in Humboldt Park to find their tent destroyed ahead of disposal and nearly all their belongings gone.
Fuentes on Friday morning said the city had been trying to arrange shelter space enabling couples to stay together. She said the city, for now, would put Porfirio and Melissa in a hotel room.
By midday, nearly all the park’s remaining residents had agreed to leave.
But one woman remained inside her tent on the park’s northwest side. A group of homeless advocates and supporters encircled the tent using garbage receptacles. Social workers from the city had not arrived. Security and sanitation workers for the city and Park District stood by.
Homeless advocates have praised Fuentes and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration for coming up with the apartments. But the advocates have criticized the plan to remove the remaining tent dwellers and close the roughly 200-acre park to future homeless arrivals.
A statement this week from the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness called on Fuentes and Johnson to “halt plans to clear [the] park and deny space to future people in need.”
The statement said Friday’s plan “mirrors the hollow cruelty of criminalization, which tackles the visibility of homelessness more than it grapples with its systemic root causes.”
But Fuentes told WBEZ that officials were “doing everything we have to do to avoid” ticketing and arresting people who refuse to leave the park on Friday, or who arrive and pitch a tent at a later date.
She said officials want to “make sure that we are not criminalizing them and that we are not having their first several encounters being with police but with service providers that can meet their needs.”
The Puerto Rican Cultural Center sent news outlets a statement praising Fuentes’ “leadership in providing sustainable and compassionate alternatives for our unhoused neighbors in Humboldt Park.”
Chip Mitchell reports for WBEZ Chicago on policing, public safety and public health. Follow him at Bluesky and X. Contact him at cmitchell@wbez.org.
