Chicago spent $636.9 million to house 46,282 people during the migrant crisis that dominated the first 18 months of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration, 42% of which came from the city’s corporate fund.
In one of his first official actions as the city’s chief watchdog, Inspector General David Glockner released what he called an “explainer” on the city’s involvement with the migrant crisis, a report that includes final spending numbers and a conclusion that the Johnson administration followed its procurement and payment procedures.
The numbers tell the story.
Before the caravan of buses started descending on Chicago, city-owned homeless shelters operated by the Department of Family and Support Services had a capacity of just 3,000 beds. That was nowhere near enough to accommodate the avalanche of migrants, most of them from Venezuela, with lesser numbers from the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
To absorb the new arrivals, the city opened 38 emergency shelters with a combined capacity of 15,000 as well as a landing zone that served as a “centralized intake hub where the city assessed people’s immediate needs” for food and clothing, and placed them in shelters.
Even that was not enough to accommodate the influx.
Beginning in April 2023, one month before Johnson took office, Chicago relied heavily on district police stations, O’Hare and Midway Airports to handle the overflow.
“By October 2023, over 3,000 such people remained in district stations throughout the city, a population larger than the maximum capacity of the pre-existing shelter system,” Glockner’s analysis stated.
“CPD stated that this use greatly impacted the district stations, which were not designed or equipped to have people living in them… The Department needed to repair and clean restrooms more often during this time… Front desk staff complained about the noise levels in lobbies. CPD also had to request special cleaning to prevent bed bug infestations and disease outbreaks.”
Although the Chicago Police Department did not assign specific staff to handle new arrivals sleeping on police station floors, it did “have to assign additional units to monitor areas surrounding” the largest city-run shelters.
At O’Hare and Midway, contractors “simply hung drapes on pipes within staging areas” to give new arrivals some semblance of privacy, the report states.
With so much spending in such a short time, the inspector general’s office set out to determine whether the city followed its own procurement rules and whether the Johnson administration’s migrant spending dashboard had been transparent.
Glockner concluded that the city’s reporting of the $639.6 million of spending from both grant and the city’s own corporate funds was “accurate and transparent, with only $50,916 in transactions that should have been included in the reported total but were omitted.”
More than $622 million of the money spent on the migrant mission went to 10 vendors. They were led by Favorite Healthcare Staffing ($400.3 million) and Equitable Social Solutions ($128.9 million).
And after reviewing a sample of 100 invoices totaling $20.4 million, Glockner found that 99.6% of that sample “followed the city’s procurement and invoicing procedures.”
“Chicago faced a significant humanitarian challenge during the new arrivals mission, resulting in the expenditures or substantial city funds,” Glockner said in a press release that accompanied his analysis.
“Our review found the city accurately reported this spending and followed established procurement processes — an important foundation for responsible stewardships during urgent… operations.”
Johnson inherited the migrant crisis and got off to a rocky political start, in part because of the difficult choices it forced him to make. One of his first Council meetings included a vote on $51 million in surplus funding for the crisis — after a contentious, “us-versus-them” debate that reduced one alderperson to tears.
Johnson’s first budget included just $150 million in funding he knew would last only until April 1. He low-balled the figure to put pressure on the federal government, but the tactic failed.
At one point Johnson used $95 million in federal stimulus money to slap an end-of-year Band-Aid on the migrant crisis. But that alienated some alderpersons who control spending and complained they were not consulted.
During the crisis, Johnson unveiled plans for a winterized camp at a contaminated Southwest Side industrial site only to have Gov. JB Pritzker reject the idea amid environmental concerns. The local alderperson, Julia Ramirez, a progressive ally, felt blindsided by the mayor’s plan and was subsequently physically accosted by furious constituents. The abandoned plan ended up costing Chicago taxpayers nearly $1 million.
By opening brick and mortar shelters at a furious pace, Johnson managed to empty police station lobbies filled with asylum-seekers and return Park District fieldhouses to their intended use.