Some migrants finding comfort living outdoors
Settlements can offer more cultural familiarity than uncertainty of shelters
Even after being offered a bed in a city-run shelter multiple times since getting to Chicago from Ecuador in September, Jeancarlos Bosquez refused to take it.
Instead, the 25-year-old and his friends, two migrants from Venezuela, got a tent big enough for all three of them, fortified it with wood sticks, wrapped it in a tarp to protect it from the rain and cold, and put carpet on the ground. They also added a microwave and a small fridge, making it their home outside of the Englewood District (7th) police station.
Most mornings they would get up early and make coffee on a small electric stove they connected to an outlet outside the station. And other times, they would cook lunch and dinner on an old grill.
“Estabamos bien ahí. We were doing fine there,” Bosquez said on a recent December morning.
“If it wasn’t for the cold, we wouldn’t mind living there all the time,” he said.
But the cold hit, and the city stepped up its efforts to get migrants into shelters, fueled by advocates’ calls for more dignified treatment of migrants. But many migrants like Bosquez, who had created a community outside some of the stations, and even in parks, felt displaced and unheard.
They wanted to stay.
Some migrants have left city shelters despite the cold, returning to police stations or spaces where they know that the tent community infrastructure remains. Many say that conditions inside shelters are dire and dangerous and that they prefer to brave the cold, noting rules that do not provide them a viable way out
of shelters, as well as tension among the thousands of migrants, and bad food.
Experts say that once winter weather subsides and a city policy capping shelter stays at 60 days takes full effect, migrants will resort to creating those types of spaces — commonly known as settlements — as they have in other Latin American countries.
When Bosquez was told by volunteers that he needed to dismantle the tent, he was angry. Instead of hopping on the bus to a shelter, he and his friends resorted to the Ogden District (10th) police station, where a small tent city has been established on an adjacent piece of land. They found an abandoned makeshift house and quickly rebuilt it.
The house was erected as a perfect square with wood, wrapped in boards, pieces of carpet, docks of blankets, and tarps. A piece of clear plastic served as a window and layers of heavy blankets made up the door of the house right next to the police station at 1412 S. Blue Island Ave.
Just two days later, Bosquez said, they were forced out into a shelter.
“We had no other option,” he said.
But he and his friends don’t anticipate staying there very long, he said, hoping that warmer weather comes soon or that he and his friends can find an apartment. He prefers to live in a settlement.
More than a dozen other migrants, mostly single males, stayed in the micro tent city next to the station.
The settlements, known as asentamientos in Spanish, are a way of life for many migrants, who often set up micro-communities in vacant land, building houses out of materials they find in the garbage, living off the little money that they make and creating their own economy mostly based on making and selling traditional food, cutting hair, doing nails, braiding hair and even tattooing.
A way of life
During the summer, life outside some of the police stations across the city was vibrant.
The sound of sweet Latin melodies intertwined outside the Englewood station with chatter in Spanish, laughs and sometimes the cry of a child. Many of the children played, running from one end to the other. A man swept the whole area, picking up the garbage throughout the station.
The group had created a makeshift kitchen on the corner of the station, behind a row of port-apotties. There, some of the women took turns making food. Most times, they made arepas, a traditional Venezuelan dish, to share with their fellow migrants.
They would sometimes get the ingredients from people who stopped by to donate them or they would gather money among themselves or buy them.
“Pruebela! Try it,” a woman told one of the volunteers as they talked about getting their kids enrolled in school.
Next to them, a man had set up a space to cut hair. A young boy approached him and sat on the table.
“He hadn’t gotten a haircut since we left,” his mother laughed.
The man said he was a barber back home, in Venezuela, and he was making money by offering his compatriots haircuts for a minimal price.
“We don’t mind it here,” the mother said. “People come here to help us, they give us food, clothes, and everything that we need.”
Throughout the summer, many of the people that were sent to shelters, would return to the Englewood station during the day to leave their children while they worked, to find food, or to be in the community, said Gabriela Castillo from the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which helped to address the needs of the migrants at that station.
It’s a way of life that has been normalized by the Venezuelan community in Colombia over the last decade, said Brayan Lozano, a migrant from Colombia who served as a human rights advocate and community organizer in his native country.
Before coming to Chicago, Lozano worked for about five years at a Venezuelan settlement in Barranquilla, Colombia, under the AmeriCares Foundation, a global nonprofit organization focused on health and development for individuals affected by poverty, disaster or crisis.
When he arrived in Chicago in May, Lozano quickly became an essential member of the mutual aid groups that have stepped in to help the migrants arriving at police stations since he understands the culture and can recognize their needs and limitations. He has served as a consultant to city leaders, advising on how to deal with the crisis, he said.
He identified the pattern when several migrants in the Central District (1st) station would purposely leave when city buses showed up to pick them up to transport them to a shelter. For many, the shelters — most now in empty warehouses or other buildings — are not hotel rooms, as they expected, Lozano said, so they are resorting to what they deem as more comfortable for them and what they are used to culturally.
The trend is rooted in the socialist political and socioeconomic policies in Venezuela, Lozano said. “Many grew up in a community that has handed them what officials believe they need whether it be enough or not, but it’s always been given to them,” he said.
“Para muchos, es un círculo vicioso. For many, it is like a vicious cycle,” he said. “They want to change their life, get ahead, but simply don’t understand how to do that because they don’t have that knowledge.”
He said migrants in Chicago must receive help to feel empowered to work and get ahead — and fewer of the handouts that can make them feel too comfortable where they are.
He said that the 60-day limit in shelters will encourage some to find a way out, identify resources, and find a job and permanent place to live, but it will inevitably push some to the streets, where they may fall into what Chicago identifies as homelessness.
Anyone living in an unsheltered setting or in a shelter is considered homeless by the city and counted in the city’s annual Homeless Point-in-time Count, according to Mary May, the spokesperson of the Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management & Communications.
According to May, the city and mutual aid volunteers have focused their engagement on people in the tent locations outside police stations, but as migrants have been moved out of the stations, some of the focus will shift to homeless-outreach teams.
“We can’t force anyone to enter a shelter. However, we have made multiple attempts to single individuals and families to enter shelters not only to get out the cold but tor receive the benefits,” May said.
The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless has not yet taken into account different living conditions of migrants, said Sam PalerPonce, the interim associate director of policy. Paler said they intend to release a comprehensive report in the new year, estimating the total number of people experiencing all forms of homelessness.
The most recent report, however, shows a 37% increase in homeless individuals in the Chicago area.
While some choose to live in the streets, others say they are being forced out of the shelters due to what they say are strict rules, maltreatment by staff members and poor conditions in city-run housing.
Alfredo Puma, 37, told the Tribune a week ago he was living in a tent in a park outside the Albany Park District (17th) police station because he wasn’t allowed inside the city-run shelter with his family.
His wife and five children were moved to a shelter at 3034 W. Foster Ave. after his daughter was quarantined at a different shelter for chickenpox.
The Chicago Department of Public Health has seen an increase in chickenpox cases, especially in the last four weeks. Most cases have been in people newly arrived from the U.S. southern border living in shelters, according to city data.
Puma’s family is from Ecuador. They fled their home country for political reasons, Puma said. He used to run a vibrant business.
Puma said he was confused and angry that he couldn’t stay at the shelter.
Instead of going to a shelter for singles across town, Puma made the decision to stay in a tent outside. There is a small encampment of other migrants who have made similar decisions. They’ve strung a tarp over a camp stove and settled on the wood chips of a playground near the police station in Albany Park.
“It’s terribly cold. I want to go to the shelter. It shouldn’t be like that,” he said. “But at least here, I’m close to my family. I love my family.”
His wife, Maria Gevara, 33, said being from Ecuador, she and her children feel like outsiders at the shelter. They miss their father.
“I don’t like their way of life. No me gusta la forma de vivir ahí,” she said about the Venezuelans she now cohabitates with.
For now, the family has had to adjust to a life where their dad lives away from them. On Dec. 13, the mother and father gathered some food from Puma’s encampment and got on a bus to pick up their kids from schools near the shelter.
Some advocates and volunteers worry about the well-being of the children when parents chose to stay in encampments or spend the day with them begging for money or looking for work in the cold weather.
Erika Villegas, who had been leading mutual aid efforts in Far South Side stations since May, said she had to persuade some migrant parents to go into the shelter, explaining to them the danger they could face living in a tent.
“If they’re an adult, they can go ahead and do that, but you cannot if you have children,” Villegas said.
The encampment next to the Ogden police station is still vibrant, though quieter because of the cold. Most people only return to sleep, spending their days working elsewhere.
Bosques and his friends had to leave, but more migrants decided to stay. On a recent Friday afternoon, the group turned on a grill and used an old pot to make eggs for some children who had come with their mother from the shelter in Pilsen.
Their mother, who did not want to be named because she feared retaliation from staff members, said she frequents the encampment because she feels more comfortable there.
“We can make food here and I feel safer,” she said.
Her children ran around wearing large jackets while some of the men cooked eggs and prepared steaks to grill.
As he prepared to cook the meat, Bryan Figueroa, from Venezuela, said that he went into a shelter for a day and immediately left.
There are fights, robberies and sickness inside the shelters, he said. They’re also not allowed to cut hair, make food or do nails to keep their economy going.
“Esta horrible ahí,” Figueroa said. “That’s a place for complacent people, we need the flexibility to work and move forward.”
Most have made a living out of construction jobs, waiting at hardware stores. Figueroa said that he needs a warm place to live but is not willing to go into city-run shelter.
Instead, he planned on staying at the encampment until he could raise enough money to rent a place for the winter.
That may change if it snows, he said, laughing.