Single medical firm makes $7.2 million housing Chicago’s asylum seekers; city grants $9,000 to migrants for rent and apartment essentials

Chicago is providing $9,000 in rental assistance to migrants needing temporary housing — after paying a medical company as much as $7.2 to staff shelters for just one week, according to official records.

The Windy City is struggling with more than 11,000 migrants in shelters and 4,000 staying in police stations and O’Hare International Airport, after more than 18,000 arrived in the city in one year.

To free up much-needed space in shelters, the state of Illinois is helping cover the costs of temporary housing for migrants, including $9,000 in rental subsidies over six months, Chicago’s Deputy Chief of Staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas told Fox32. The money includes help with moving costs and a starter package to furnish apartments.

The city has allocated $4 million to help migrants find temporary housing, and the state has contributed another $38 million. It is unclear how many migrants are currently benefiting from the program.

“That lease is for six months and ideally people would have started their legal process, obtained a legal work permit and been able to maintain that apartment,” said Ald. Pacione Zayas. ‘I assume the payment to the landlord is based on the market rate, on the configuration of the apartment. And so it varies from place to place.”

Meanwhile, a new report has revealed that Kansas-based company Favorite Healthcare Staffing billed the city more than $7.2 million to staff migrant shelters for just four weeks, as reported by NBC 5.

The invoices covered 400 employees who worked between April 22 and May 19, including a nurse who was paid $20,000 for a single week of work in December. The same nurse earned $16,536 for seven days of work in April.

The city appeared to lower hourly rates after reports on their December bills, but the lowest paid employee rates were still $50 per hour, while the most expensive was $156 per hour, before overtime.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has claimed that the hourly rates were intended to cover administrative costs such as hotel rooms for out-of-town workers

Chicago has already spent $60 million on workforce shelters, including $1.4 million on the former Wadsworth School, $1.6 million on the Inn of Chicago and $1.2 million on the Social Club shelter.

And the situation isn’t getting any better as more and more buses from Texas arrive. Last week, another 41 buses arrived carrying asylum seekers who had crossed the US-Mexico border.

Mayor Johnson and several city council members will visit the border this week.

“We have to start assessing the situation,” Johnson said, “this is serious. And I said it. I mean, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard me say how serious this dynamic is.”

Most of the migrants arriving in Chicago in the past year have come from Texas, largely led by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

As more migrants arrived, the city’s existing services came under pressure. Officials struggled to find longer-term housing solutions, while saying the city needed more help from state and federal governments.

Many migrants come from Venezuela, where a political, social and economic crisis over the past decade has pushed millions of people into poverty. At least 7.3 million people have left, many risking an often harrowing route to the United States.

Chicago residents have expressed anger over the influx of migrants and the temporary shelters that have been set up.

Last week, city officials rejected plans to convert the field house from a soccer field to a park into a migrant shelter, following protests from angry locals who claimed the facility provided a safe place for the city’s youth.

It came after hundreds joined the Windy City Dolphins Youth Football League to protest the plan to turn the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse into an emergency shelter for about 200 asylum seekers.

Just two years after declaring his state the “most hospitable state in the nation” and expanding immigrant protections, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has begged President Joe Biden to divert migrants from his state.

In an effort to ease the crisis that has overwhelmed Chicago and New York, the Biden administration said it would resume deportations of Venezuelans, marking another stark reversal in migration policy that follows the president’s decision to to resume construction of the border wall.

Last month, Johnson quietly signed a $29 million contract with a security company to build base camps for migrants.

The city’s deal with controversial firm Garda World includes at least six locations across the city, with zones for between 200 and 1,400 asylum seekers. It also includes bedding, laundry, showers, three meals a day and security.

City leaders have said they will follow New York’s lead by converting several locations around the city into migrant shelters.

Meanwhile, the wave of migrants in New York has overwhelmed the city, where more than 120,000 newcomers have arrived since August last year.

The estimated cost to house this is expected to be $12 billion over three years. The staggering annual costs are equal to the municipal budgets for sanitation, fire and parks combined.

Manhattan’s historic The Roosevelt Hotel — dubbed “the new Ellis Island” by one city official — has become the migrant registration point and currently houses 3,000 asylum seekers.

Adams has made a series of urgent pleas for a change in federal immigration policy and for funding to help the city manage the arrival of migrants, which he says could cost the city $12 billion over three years as it leases space in hotels and introduce new emergency measures. offers shelter and provides various government services to asylum seekers.