City closes Woodlawn migrant shelter and moves residents

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file

The city has closed a South Side shelter housing newly arrived migrants, officials announced Monday.

The shelter at the former Wadsworth Elementary School, 6420 S. University Ave., was recently "decompressed" and all residents were moved to other temporary shelters or had found permanent housing, city officials said.

"The city continues to receive new arrivals at the Landing Zone who have arrived via plane, commercial bus lines and on chartered buses from Texas that are dropping off in the suburbs," said Mary May, a spokesperson with the Office of Emergency Management and Communication. "As the mission evolves, the city will continue to work with our state and county partners to look at all options to provide temporary emergency shelter for this mission."

Eleven temporary shelters have closed since last year, and the number of migrants in shelters has also significantly dropped, city officials said.

More than 41,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since last year, and more than 7,700 remain in the 16 emergency shelters still operating. As of Tuesday, 27 migrants were waiting for shelter placement, according to the city's Office of Emergency Management & Communications.

“When I took over this mission a year ago, there were thousands of asylum seekers sleeping on police station floors with almost a thousand more living at our city’s airports,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement. “I'm proud of the work that we have accomplished this first year to move folks out of police stations and into temporary emergency shelter where they have received medical services, become part of our public education system, and have made major strides on the path to independence and self-sufficiency."

The Wadsworth shelter — which opened in February of 2023 — was initially met with resistance from residents in the Woodlawn neighborhood who felt that city officials weren't being transparent. Community members were vocal about being left out of discussions.

Some felt there was a lack of communication about funding for the shelter, and others worried about the state of the shuttered school and the lack of resources made available for migrants staying there.

The city had opened 27 temporary shelters to house migrants. In a statement, Johnson said the consolidation of shelters will save "taxpayers tens of millions of dollars over the course of the next year."

"We have welcomed tens of thousands of families who needed help while saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by making the mission more efficient and by collaborating with anyone and everyone who has been willing to work with us to address this humanitarian crisis," the mayor said.