With the city anticipating a budget surplus to close out the year, Mayor Brandon Johnson will shift $95 million in COVID-19 relief funds to cover some of the ever-mounting costs of sheltering thousands of asylum-seekers coming to Chicago by the day.
Johnson’s top aides said they announced the budget maneuver Friday for the sake of transparency over how the city is paying to care for nearly 15,000 migrants living in city shelters — but acknowledged the revised accounting won’t move the needle in a crisis pushing city resources to the limit.
“This doesn’t change that outlook,” Johnson’s senior adviser, Jason Lee, told the Sun-Times. “We’re going to continue to lobby the federal government for more support as the situation becomes, frankly, more unstable.”
The city had budgeted about $152 million for 2023 city operations to be covered in American Rescue Plan Act funds, the dollars allotted by the federal government in 2021 to help local governments make ends meet amid COVID-19 shutdowns.
Better-than-expected city revenue means some of those operational costs can be covered by the city’s corporate fund, freeing up $95 million in federal dollars for the migrant crisis, said city Budget Director Annette Guzman.
The city so far has spent more than $138 million to care for the new arrivals, mostly Venezuelan migrants from the southern U.S. border who have been bused and flown to Chicago by Republican leaders aiming to shift costs to Democratic-led cities.
Johnson has criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for not directing more federal money to help deal with a situation that’s only expected to escalate.
In a statement, the mayor said “[W]e are allocating federal funds to deal with a federal problem. By allocating ARPA funding for this mission, we are meeting the City’s financial obligations without cutting the critical services that Chicagoans rely on every day.”
Johnson’s office briefed City Council members on the plan Friday.
The $95 million has effectively already been spent on leases, staffing, food and supplies for some of the 27 city shelters that have been launched since last year.
Johnson went to the City Council earlier this year to approve $51 million in emergency spending, and his first budget, which goes into effect in the new year, includes $150 million for migrant spending — which his office has acknowledged is well short of what will be needed.
“We have reached a critical point in this mission absent real, significant intervention immediately,” Johnson said Wednesday in his latest call for more federal assistance. “Our local economies are not designed to respond to this kind of crisis.”
The city has about $400 million left in federal rescue plan act funds that are earmarked for community projects, according to Guzman, who said city officials “don’t anticipate” resorting to using those dollars for the crisis in 2024.
