CHICAGO — The city has begun removing some tents this week from a controversial Northwest Side homeless encampment that has divided neighbors, city officials and homeless advocates on the best path forward for the people who have set up camp along Foster Avenue.

The future of the roughly 20 people in the Gompers Park encampment remains uncertain after a planned “accelerated moving event” — a consolidated process where case managers help people find housing, complete documentation and choose furniture — was delayed from Feb. 24 to March 5 because of a possible freeze to federal funds, city officials said.

The city delayed the rehousing process for Gompers Park and at least one other encampment out of uncertainty over access to federal funds that help to pay for those efforts.

“Due to the federal funding freeze issued by the White House and the Federal Office of Management and Budget on January 27th, 2025, the AME at Gompers Park was rescheduled,” Chief Homelessness Officer Sendy Soto wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to elected officials. “Given the uncertainty around access to federal funding, All Chicago temporarily paused all AMEs citywide.”

The city has set aside $29.5 million for rehousing people for the 2025 budget year, enough to rehome 360 households and support 1,000 more.

City officials have seen success using these expedited housing offers to help people move into permanent housing or temporary shelters, including an encampment in the 39th Ward last summer, and in Humboldt Park, farther south.

But Ald. Samantha Nugent, 39th, says that the city has no plans to clear out the encampment at Gompers Park, unlike how the city has addressed other tent cities. She is worried that without the threat of removal, tent dwellers may be unmotivated to accept the city’s housing offer.

During similar efforts in other encampments in the 39th Ward, Nugent said “it was made very clear to the folks living there that they wouldn’t be able to live (at) in the site anymore.”

Though Soto wrote that the city wouldn’t remove or relocate residents and their tents, she pointed out that people camping in the park may eventually be forced out for other reasons. People who might remain in the park will also need to move in the future for the sake of Park District activities, she wrote. A Park District representative said the agency would be executing several projects over the spring, though dates weren’t yet set.

Some residents of the encampment have previously said they’d take almost any housing offered to them.

“South Side, West Side, I’ll take anywhere,” Agata Janick, who has lived in the encampment for about two years, previously told the Tribune. All things equal, Janick continued, she’d like to stay on the Northwest Side if she can.

Advocates for the homeless say the only solution for homelessness is permanent housing. If that cannot be offered, then they say the homeless should be able to take an offer of shelter or remain where they are camping until it can be provided. “]

The camp has become a flash point among neighbors over the last several months. Nugent and a group of residents organized under the banner of the Restore Gompers Park Coalition have been pushing for the tents to be removed and their occupants housed, citing quality of life and safety concerns for park users and the people living there. The Fire Department has responded to at least three fires at the encampment this month.

A local youth baseball league recently said it wouldn’t play its games at the park anymore and Nugent and other area representatives wrote a letter to the city with safety concerns about the fires from propane-powered heaters and frigid temperatures.

“We are deeply concerned about the ongoing use of these unsafe heating methods, which place encampment residents and the public at risk of injury and death,” the Feb. 10 letter read.

The city removed two tents and several heating devices at Gompers Park on Wednesday and is scheduled to return Friday to remove a group of yurts that have appeared in the North Mayfair park, according to a Park District statement. The tents were removed with the consent of their owners, officials and advocates said.

Northwest Side outreach volunteer Monica Dillon said encampment residents had been confused about what was happening at the cleaning Wednesday morning despite warnings from park security and posted notices about a cleanup.

“(AMEs and camp closures are) being portrayed as one and the same and they’re not,” she said. “One offers an opportunity, a way to house someone, the other literally takes them away from where they’re existing.”

Asked about the cleaning at a post-City Council news conference, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s chief of staff Christina Pacione-Zayas described the cleaning as “an intermediate step” before the March 5 rehousing event.

Last summer, the encampment site in the 39th Ward was cleared from the North Shore Channel between Foster and Bryn Mawr avenues. Nearby, the Chicago Department of Transportation fenced off the area under the Bryn Mawr viaduct after the campsite underneath it was cleared.

Last year, city workers fenced off another old tent city site by the Dan Ryan Expressway. In Humboldt Park — once the city’s largest encampment — officials have said those who camp there in the future would be offered resources and connected to outreach workers from the Department of Family andSupport Services.

If they still refuse to disassemble their tent, Park District officials and Chicago police will remove the tent after a 24-hour warning period. A spokesperson for the city wasn’t able to provide further comment when asked whether the city would in the future enforcement against people sleeping in the park.

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Chicago Tribune’s Jake Sheridan contributed.

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