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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has come under attack for his refusal to be totally open about how hundreds of millions of public funds ended up in the city's homeless shelters.
Throughout the previous 18 months, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has bused in over 34,000 asylum seekers, and the Windy City has struggled to care for them.
Chicago's $300M Spending on Migrant Shelters
Chicago has spent $300 million on the problem of migrant shelters. The city and the state of Illinois are at odds about where to build further shelters, and in one of the shelters, there is presently a measles epidemic.
The state established a page on the state comptroller's website that would track the situation in an attempt to allay concerns about how public money would be used for it.
But the city won't say where all the money is going, and Democratic Mayor Johnson avoided questions from the media. Out of the 27 shelters in the city, only one provides full openness about funding from the city.
The taxpayers who paid for The Inn in Chicago received up to $344,000 a week in payments from the ones who actually did. There are 1,500 beds there, which works out to a total of $17 million yearly.
While the Ogden shelter receives $150,000 per week, other shelters, such as the one located in the Pilson section of the city, receive $280,000 per week. These shelters have taken in millions of dollars over the past three months while providing services to 2,000 and 1,000 migrants, respectively.
The suggestion that the city is concealing the use of those funds by employing private corporations from out of state to staff the shelters caused even more indignation. According to city records, Favorite Health Care, a Kansas-based business whose exorbitant costs have infuriated Chicago officials, has received $206 million.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Under Scrutiny
Equitable Social Solutions, a Kentucky-based business, has been granted $45 million to map shelter locations. The head of the city council's immigrant committee, Alderman Andre Vasquez, is disappointed that the city won't disclose the revenues produced by such businesses.
Before they could meet with local officials and offer his building as a refuge, at least one landlord received orders not to show up. Johnson avoided inquiries regarding offering more transparency when they were posed
After reaching a high of 15,000 in December, when authorities issued an advisory that the system had "reached capacity," the number of asylum seekers in municipal shelters seems to be beginning to decline.
ReloShare aims to provide protection and safety to low-income individuals who have pressing needs yet are frequently disregarded. ReloShare has worked in conjunction with hundreds of government and social service organizations, including those in the city of Chicago, to provide an essential middleman between at-risk people and families and safe housing, frequently during the most trying times in their lives.
When further questions were asked about the specifics of how locations are chosen and what is covered by the leasing agreements, a Reloshare official remained silent.
Mayor Johnson refuted recent Chicago Sun-Times reporting that the Johnson administration had turned down proposals from the Archdiocese of Chicago to provide possible shelter locations for migrants at last week's post-city council press conference.
NBC Chicago reported that he avoided answering questions from NBC 5 Investigates about whether he would be in favor of adding more records to the website dedicated to the city's migrant expenditures.
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