The countdown has begun for all migrants entering city shelters Friday to find housing within 60 days or be forced to leave under a new rule issued by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Migrants who enter shelters Friday will have to be out by mid-January, according to the mayor’s office.
For 12,200 migrants already in city shelters, the 60-day rule will not apply immediately. However, all of those already sheltered will have to leave by early April.
City officials revealed the details of the shelter-stay rule in an announcement Friday, saying the aim of the new rule was to accelerate “resettlement efforts.”
Nearly 25,000 migrants have been bused or flown to Chicago since August 2022. Sheltering, feeding and resettling them has been one of the biggest single uses of city and state resources.
Several thousand migrants have found housing through a state program, independently or through other programs. But thousands remain in shelters and 2,200 are camped out at police stations and O’Hare Airport.
Migrants entering a shelter Friday or afterward will also not have access to a state rental assistance program, state officials announced Thursday.
Migrants leaving shelters who have not found alternative housing will be able to return to the city’s “landing zone” — where they were first dropped off in the city — to ask for placement in a new shelter.
Migrants who have signed a lease that starts after their shelter limit will be allowed to stay, as will others for extenuating circumstances, such as extreme cold or medical crises.
In addition to the migrants entering shelter Friday, a group of about 50 migrants who entered city shelters in 2022 will have to leave in mid-January.
Those who entered between January and July, about 3,000 people, will have to leave in early February.
The nearly 9,000 people who entered between August and Thursday, will have to leave by the start of April.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.