Chicago Spends Millions Per Week Housing Migrants, But Hides the Details
BRITTANY M. HUGHES | MARCH 28, 2024
The city of Chicago is spending millions upon millions of dollars housing illegal aliens in more than two-dozen shelters across the city, including multiple hotels that are costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per night – each.
Oh, and it gets better. The local NBC affiliate in Chicago asked the city for copies of the leases between the city and these hotels that have agreed to house hundreds of migrant families on the taxpayer dime, but to no avail. The outlet then filed a FOIA request with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office for the information, which worked – kind of. In a report, NBC5 said they received copies of only nine leases, only one-third the 27 shelters the city is currently operating.
“Those missing include agreements for the city’s largest, most expensive shelters,” NBC5 reported before citing former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who added, “You should not have to jump through the hoops you’ve had to jump through to get to partial information.”
“You absolutely should know every step of the way where the public’s money is going to so you can make an assessment as to whether or not it is being used well,” he said.
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The whole process is part of a $300 million allocation the city has set aside to house and support the hordes of illegal aliens who’ve streamed in from President Joe Biden’s open border and made their way into the Windy City. The city of Chicago paid a Louisville, Kentucky-based company called “Equitable Social Solutions” $45 million to “identify and facilitate” shelters with help of a second, Chicago-based company called “Reloshare.” It’s not clear how exactly these millions are being used, or how much these “facilitating” companies are banking in profit. Their contracts aren’t public, nor are the lease agreements between the city and the hotels being turned into shelters.
But even without knowing how much the city is spending on its biggest shelters, what NBC5 found was absolutely astounding. The nine lease agreements they were able to get their hands on include one migrant shelter at The Inn in Chicago, where at least 1,500 migrants are being housed at a cost of $38,000 per night. That’s $344,000 weekly, or about $17 million per year.
Another shelter in Pilson, which houses some 2,000 migrants, costs $280,000 per week, while a shelter in Ogden houses about 1,000 migrants at $150,000 per week.
Totaled up, that’s $774,000 per week – and that’s just three out of 27 shelters.
NBC5 added that when they asked for specifics how this money was being used, ReloShare provided a vague statement but no answers, and most hotel owners didn’t respond at all. Even Chicago alderman said they were unclear on how the money had been spent, the outlet reported.
But hey, you’d better file your taxes correctly, or else.
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