Chicago is grappling with local backlash against moving homeless migrants into a new government-run tent encampment as temperatures drop and more migrants continue to arrive.

Hundreds of migrants are still sleeping on floors or in tents outside city police stations. Some who remained this week huddled near tents wearing parkas, knit hats and even ski goggles to cope with the cold weather and falling snow.

At the same time, dozens of protesters have been gathering daily near a construction site where one of two new shelters is being built in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. The shelters, funded by the state of Illinois and expected to open as soon as mid-December, will house up to 2,200 asylum seekers and cost $65 million to build.

Community members in Brighton Park are suing the city to try to stop construction, saying it violates Chicago zoning laws.

    • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      37·
      11 months ago

      If someone tells me that he would prefer to live next to a homeless shelter, I won’t believe him. IMO unless you actually live next to one, you’re not in a position to judge these people.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          63·
          11 months ago

          What motivation do they have to agree with that?

          If you show up with a plan to make my life worse, I’ll tell you to make your own life worse if you like your plan so much. Whether or not it’s necessary to make someone’s life worse doesn’t affect that. Even if I know that ultimately someone is going to lose the fight, I’ll still fight. I think most people would.

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
            61·
            11 months ago

            What motivation do they have to agree with that?

            The motivation to… accept the necessity of… people not freezing to death in the streets?

            This is some Thatcherite “There is no society” brainrot.

            • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              53·
              11 months ago

              What I’m saying is that even if it’s necessary to build a shelter, it isn’t necessary to built a shelter right there.

              • PugJesus@kbin.social
                51·
                11 months ago

                Okay, they’ll just build the shelter in the 4th dimension, where no one can object.

                Are you fucking daft?

                • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  42·
                  11 months ago

                  I’m a proud NIMBY. I think YIMBYs are either hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach or fools who are going to end up with a lot of unpleasant neighbors. If they want to jump in front of that bullet then they can go ahead, but generally I see them claiming moral superiority but actually just telling other people what they ought to want in their neighborhood.

          • SheeEttin@lemmy.worldEnglish
            42·
            11 months ago

            Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It’s part of living in a society (bottom text).

        • pan_troglodytes@programming.dev
          English
          11·
          11 months ago

          accept that property values will plummet for everything in several thousand feet? Chicago could have built housing out in the sticks, somewhere where it wouldnt impact anything. no, they chose this.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
        31·
        11 months ago

        Yes I am because I’ve lived on the streets and couch-surfed while unhoused. I know what it’s like to be refused help when temps are well below zero and there’s nowhere to go.