“Give us a home or leave us alone,” the residents and others chanted at a press conference held in the park on Tuesday, asking Mayor Lori Lightfoot to direct federal relief money towards housing the homeless.
A half-dozen homeless people living in an Avondale park are resisting efforts by the city to remove them.
“Give us a home or leave us alone,” the residents and others chanted at a news conference in Fireman’s Park, where they asked Mayor Lori Lightfoot to direct federal relief money towards housing the homeless.
“It’s just not right what they are doing to us,” said Yefte Santiago Escobar, who has lived in the park for two months. “The people living in this park are good people.”
City officials had gone to the park a week and a half ago to warn residents they would be forced to move. A few days later, they placed stickers on their tents to remind them of the impending removal, originally, set for Tuesday. Late last week, it was delayed to Friday.
But they aren’t planning to leave then, either.
While the city has offered to put the residents in homeless shelters, Escobar said there are many safety issues at shelters, and he would rather find another park to live in.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) also spoke at the news conference, joined by representatives from the Chicago Union of the Homeless and Logan Square Neighborhood Association, among others. He wants Lightfoot to direct $125 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds toward housing the homeless.
“Kicking people while they are down is not a solution to homelessness,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “Coming and telling people that they have to take down their tents, their only shelter, is not a solution to homelessness.”
The removal wasn’t prompted by complaints from other neighborhood residents, but by an order from the mayor’s office, Ramirez-Rosa said.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the only instance of the city removing a homeless encampment. But with the city fully reopened and coronavirus restrictions mostly lifted, more such actions have been planned, said Diane O’Connell, Community Lawyer for Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
“This is happening during such a time of social and economic hardship due to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” O’Connell said. “Things have gotten a little bit better and then the city just jumps right on making these threats to people who have been struggling this past year and for so long before that.”
from Chicago Sun-Times - All https://ift.tt/3dKuFy7
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