After fires, officials prepare to remove another homeless encampment on Chicago’s Northwest Side

Snow and ice covered Carmen Laude’s wheelchair. A mattress, turned upright, served as the front door of her tent in Legion Park, which straddles a mile of the Chicago River on the Northwest Side.

Inside the tent, Laude, 72, cooked soup over a propane-powered stove. The pot was “big enough to feed everyone who is hungry,” she said, motioning to the rest of the encampment, which consists of 15 tents.

As Laude kept an eye on the soup Monday, a city of Chicago social worker stopped by with news that she could get an apartment for $950 a month. Laude, who has lived in the park nearly two years, told the city staffer she couldn’t afford that much on her $1,974 monthly Social Security income.

But her options, as the city prepares to clear away the encampment Tuesday, appear to be few.

“All they do is, ‘OK, you’re moving from there to there.’ That’s not going to help — destroying all the things we accumulated for our needs,” Laude said. “That’s killing.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration says the encampment’s roughly 20 inhabitants will be offered long-term housing, but might have to wait weeks for the apartments to be ready.

That means moving to a shelter, a “bridge” housing facility with social services, or staying outside, officials say.

Just not in Legion Park.

The Department of Family and Support Services says city staffers will be at the park Tuesday morning to help residents move out.

“While it is our hope that encampment residents will accept support with shelter placement, we respect their right to decline,” the department said in a statement. “It is up to each individual to make the best choice for themselves.”

Laude said she couldn’t survive in a shelter because of health problems including a torn meniscus, severe arthritis, a hip injury and diabetes. A nursing home is also out of the question, she said, because it would mean splitting from her fiancé, her longtime caregiver.

Laude, who worked for decades in office jobs, became homeless after losing an Edgewater three-flat in 2021. She said that loss stemmed from crippling medical debt after her late husband’s long battle with cancer.

The city has been struggling to clear away tent encampments from parks in this part of the Northwest Side for years. Last year, an encampment removal in Gompers Park, about two miles southwest of Legion, led to a new encampment across the street.

Attention to Legion Park has come partly due to fires. A blaze last summer led the city to clear away wooden huts built by homeless people along the river bank.

Many of those residents then pitched tents about 100 feet from the river. Some were near a pair of tennis courts, visible from Peterson Avenue. Others were closer to a playground. The new encampment rankled neighbors who saw the tents from their homes.

After a tent fire in November, neighbors complained to city officials, who announced they would close the encampment during the first quarter of this year.

Yet another fire engulfed about half the tents in the park last month, officials said.

Sixteen encampment residents attended a Feb. 25 “accelerated moving event” to select “appropriate housing units,” the DFSS says.

A Northwest Side group called Parks for All launched a petition against the encampment removal and helped develop a proposal to keep tents 50 feet from property lines of businesses and residences; require the tent dwellers to attend a fire safety talk and receive fire extinguishers; designate a “communal cooking” area for safety; and take other steps. The proposal’s signers included the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, the Metropolitan Tenants Organization and the Illinois Union of the Homeless.

The advocacy drew officials, including Chicago Park District Superintendent Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and the city’s Chief Homelessness Officer Sendy Soto, to a meeting with encampment residents on Saturday.

But the officials refused to cancel Tuesday’s removal.

“After multiple fires at the encampment, including the most recent one that destroyed several tents, it became clear the situation posed serious safety risks for both those living there and the surrounding neighborhood,” Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) said in a statement Monday.

Chicago’s homeless population is 7,452, according to an annual city count released last July. That’s the second-highest number in at least 11 years.

Homeless advocates say the number would be about eight times higher if it included people who “double up” with friends and relatives due to eviction or economic hardship.

President Donald Trump’s administration last year announced it was shifting federal homelessness funds away from permanent housing and into temporary shelter with work and drug-treatment requirements.

Given that shift, Chicago needs city and state officials to “step up and fill in the gap as much as they can,” said Mary Tarullo, director of city policy for the Coalition to End Homelessness.

“Instead of expending any resources on closing encampments, we need more housing and, until we have housing for everyone, we cannot be closing off public spaces to people who don’t have it,” Tarullo said. “It’s not solving the problem at all.”