Migrants could start moving into shelter at former Woodlawn School this week despite opposition

Regardless of neighbors’ concerns, the City of Chicago may soon begin moving migrants to a shelter that previously served as an elementary school in the Woodlawn community.

In an interview with NBC 5, Ald said. Jeannette Taylor, representing Woodlawn, explained that she was fed up with how the city was plotting to turn the former Wadsworth Elementary School into a migrant shelter.

“The community clearly doesn’t want it,” she said. “There really is no support for the people who put them in school…”

Woodlawn residents expressed outrage at a rally in recent weeks, saying the city had begun converting the building into a shelter without soliciting any input from the community.

Taylor says her neighborhood is gentrified and needs help.

“I asked [a] freeze property taxes, I asked the trust, to help homeowners keep their homes. And so the board is once again not listening to people’, said the alderman.

The Chicago Tribune reported that city officials told Woodlawn residents at a meeting Saturday that no resources would be diverted from the community to support the shelter.

“We need resources here in the form of legislation that will allow migrants to work,” Ald said. Gilbert Villegas, representing the city’s 36th arrondissement.

Villegas calls on the federal government to provide extra support to migrants.

In addition to the old school in Wadsworth, Villegas says another state-run shelter plans to open and he wants to make sure none of the shelters are permanent.

“It’s a good way to use it as a triage and people come and set them up and then move them into some kind of permanent setup that allows them to start contributing to Chicago, this society,” he said. .