Migrants to be housed in St. Bartholomew buildings

About 300 migrants who have been waiting for shelter are expected to move into the former convent and one of the former school buildings on the St. Bartholomew campus at Addison Street and Lavergne Avenue.

The city and the Archdiocese of Chicago were close to signing an agreement for a temporary shelter in the buildings in mid-December, according to Eric Wollan, the chief capital assets officer in the archdiocese’s real estate department.

The agreement comes after more than a year of talks about providing archdiocesan buildings to temporarily shelter migrants, Wollan said, noting that the discussions accelerated after the number of migrants sleeping in tents outside police stations swelled over the summer, and winter was approaching.

“We’ve been exploring this for all the reasons we know, the humanitarian reasons,” Wollan said. “It clearly took on a new sense of urgency as winter was approaching and you had this unfolding situation of people in tents around police stations.”

He added that this effort is in addition to the work Catholic Charities has done, primarily in the area of resettling migrant families into more permanent housing (see column, page 18) and the efforts of other parishes and agencies to provide food, clothing and other resources.

According to information provided by the city of Chicago, more than 24,000 migrants had arrived in the city, mostly bused from Texas, between August 2022 and Dec. 7. Concerted efforts to house people in shelters had already reduced the number of people waiting for shelter to 580, with most staying in or around police stations.

The shelter at St. Bartholomew will house families, most with young children, Wollan said. It will be operated by the city, and those staying there will have to abide by a curfew and rules prohibiting alcohol and visitors on the premises, according to information provided by 30th Ward Ald. Ruth Cruz.

“I fully support this endeavor to save lives and to ease suffering of the refugee families who are facing the harshness of a Chicago winter,” said Father Michael O’Connell, pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish. Our Lady of the Rosary includes St. Bartholomew and St. Pascal churches. “In faith, hope and charity, I ask you to also support this response to the emergency we face.”

O’Connell said that it’s clear that this is what Catholics are supposed to do.

“We just heard it on the feast of Christ the King, when the Lord is separating the sheep from the goats,” he said. “‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, hungry and you gave me food.’ What we do for the least of our brother and sisters, we do for the Lord himself. … It’s just who we are.”

Some people in the community have expressed misgivings, O’Connell said, adding that the negative responses he has heard are based in fear.

“I hear fear, fear of the unknown, fear of people who might be different from them,” he said. “I think they’re good people, but they’re afraid of people that they don’t know.”

A small protest outside the church on Dec. 7 drew fewer than a dozen people, he said.

Many parishioners became more familiar with the difficulties faced by migrants when the parish hosted people who were staying in a temporary shelter at Wright College over the summer for Mass and dinner on Sunday evenings.

“We got to know some of them when we had supper with them,” O’Connell said. “We got to understand who they were and their fears and the hardships they had gone through.”

Some of the people who first came to the parish as migrants living in a temporary shelter now have moved into their own housing and have returned for Mass, he said.

Perhaps in part because of that experience, several parishioners have called to ask how they can help the people being sheltered in the parish buildings and make their stay more comfortable.

O’Connell said the parish will offer what it can, but the city will be operating the shelter.

The agreement calls for a renewable six-month lease with the city paying all of the costs incurred, including security, insurance, utilities and energy, and for the city to staff the shelter 24 hours a day, seven days a week, O’Connell said.

Wollan said that the archdiocese is still working with officials from the city, as well as Cook County and the state of Illinois, to see whether any more archdiocesan buildings in Chicago would be suitable to serve as temporary shelters.

Issues to be considered include the condition of the buildings, any work that would have to be done to make them ready, and their locations, Wollan said.

“St. Bartholomew’s was the first that we landed on primarily because it was the quickest,” Wollan said. “Our hope is that we’ll be in a position to offer more sites.”