Leonilo Laude lives in one of the dozen or so tents just west of the Chicago River in Ronan Park on the North Side. He’s been homeless since a fire destroyed his apartment two years ago.
Laude, 39, moved to Ronan Park after the city closed another encampment in Legion Park in March. During the encampment cleanout, city officials disposed of all his tools, which allowed him to work as a mechanic, he said.
Now, Laude is working with a caseworker, waiting to get the keys to a place of his own. Laude said his mom, Carmen — who was homeless alongside him while battling breast cancer — has already moved into an apartment. She’s one of 12 former Legion Park residents the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services said have been successfully housed so far as of May 7.
Laude said DFSS offered him a spot in a shelter after the Legion Park encampment was shuttered, but his mom was still living outside then, and he didn’t want to leave her or his community until he knew they’d all be sorted with housing. As that day approaches, Laude said he’s looking forward to accepting whatever unit is available and starting work.
“It’s a big weight off my shoulders,” Laude said.
But advocates say that although it’s a good thing for people to be housed, the Legion Park encampment closure represents broader issues with the city’s enforcement of encampment policies and raises concerns over whether the process will lead to a permanent solution for homelessness.
City closes Legion Park encampment
On March 17, multiple agencies, including the Park District and Chicago police, closed the Legion Park encampment and removed 10 tents. At the time, DFSS said around 20 people were living in the encampment earlier in the month.
A few Legion Park encampment residents moved to Ronan Park before the closure with the help of activists, like the group Parks for All, which advocates for encampments to remain in Chicago’s public parks. Some residents spent the night following the closure at a nearby church.
The closure had been planned since the fall. According to the Park District’s homeless encampment policy, 30 days of notice is required before a closure. Although tents aren’t allowed in parks and parks are closed to the public overnight, the Park District allows for discretion when deciding which can remain based on “objective factors such as public safety risks, interference with park access and programming, environmental sensitivity and prior closure history.”
One public safety risk listed in the policy is persistent fires. That’s the reason the city shut down the Legion Park encampment, according to Grace Cameron, a former Legion Park encampment member who now lives in an Austin apartment.
Cameron said neighbors complained about the fires and frequent Fire Department visits. She witnessed five fires in her time there, she said, including one on Feb. 27 that the Chicago Fire Department said burned multiple tents but caused no injuries. Some residents said at the time that they lost everything.
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“We’ve never been out (of Legion Park) until they kicked us out,” Cameron said.
Laude also said Legion Park neighbors complained and treated him and others like “garbage.” Living in Ronan Park has been much better, he said, and neighbors have even provided them with stoves.
Activists’ concerns with Park District’s encampment policies
Ryan Spangler, a caseworker at Heartland Alliance Health, said he has seen a pattern of neighbor complaints influencing encampment closures.
In the fall, some residents living near the Legion Park encampment sent a letter to city officials after a fire, requesting a minimum distance between their homes and the encampment before the closure was announced, according to Block Club Chicago.
“We’re prioritizing people for limited housing resources based on political expediency,” Spangler said.
Spangler has been involved in the process of finding housing for Legion Park residents since DFSS’ Feb. 25 housing event, which expedited the process for residents to get an apartment.
Park District policy says the agency takes a “housing-first” approach to encampments, and it says it doesn’t engage in sweeps, which it defines as a closure in which residents may not be connected with resources. However, the policy doesn’t explicitly specify if an encampment closure will always include a housing event. The Park District hasn’t yet returned a request for comment to the Tribune.
According to Spangler, the policy is murky.
“It’s not clear, and I think that is because it’s based on what encampments are inconvenient at any point in time,” Spangler said.
The Park District policy also bans propane tanks and may “prioritize enforcing the rules” outlined based on their presence. Laude explained that propane is used for cooking year-round and warmth in the colder months, and said that he doesn’t think propane caused Legion Park’s fires, but the city has still confiscated propane in the winter, Laude said.
“Waking up, and you can’t even move your hands. It hurts to move your body,” Laude said. “Literally, it’s like brushing off frostbite. And it takes a few hours, but I do it somehow.”
A need for permanent housing
Spangler said that while he’s glad to see people find housing, he wishes the city could have waited to clear the encampment until after everyone got housing. Four people are still in various stages of the housing process — from touring units to signing leases — according to DFSS as of May 7.
According to Spangler, most units currently available to the former Legion Park residents are located on the South Side, which could pose problems for those who have jobs, healthcare or friends around the park.
Participants are matched into a program called rapid rehousing, which provides a unit for a maximum period of two years, Spangler explained. If participants can’t find their way into permanent housing programs by the end of the two years, they could end up back on the streets with an eviction, Spangler said.
“Rapid rehousing doesn’t work for most folks, in my opinion,” Spangler said. “But it’s what’s currently on the menu. Obviously, we need to get people off the streets and into housing and hopefully work from there to get them connected to permanent housing.”
Unlike rapid rehousing, permanent housing doesn’t have a designated time of stay, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The most common type is permanent supportive housing, which gives participants who have a disability affecting their ability to find housing — such as a mental or physical illness — supportive services alongside a rental subsidy.
Permanent housing programs exist in Chicago and throughout the country, but the Trump administration has expressed its desire to defund those initiatives and instead fund programs with work or service requirements.
Plus, as Spangler explained, spots in permanent housing programs can be hard to come by due to demand. In a statement to the Tribune, DFSS said that the independent entity that oversees HUD grant funding decided which type of housing to offer based on the “capacity of specific housing programs.”
And even if permanent housing programs had spaces available, not everyone would qualify, Spangler said. Those programs are reserved for those with a disability who are chronically homeless, which HUD defines as experiencing homelessness for over a year or for at least four times in three years for a total of 12 months without housing.
Hope for better housing solutions
Spangler said there are pathways toward permanent housing — like through the Chicago Housing Authority and Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund — that are currently underused. He said he hopes to see more use of those paths in the near future.
In his mind, the root of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. A recent report from Housing Action Illinois and the National Low Income Housing Coalition states that there are only 34 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households in Illinois.
“Until that is addressed, we’re going to have to deal with encampments, and we should embrace encampments in the sense that they’re places to exist until we solve the affordable housing crisis,” Spangler said.
One way to ensure access to housing assistance could be giving it a designated revenue source through the city, according to Ald. Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez, 33rd, whose ward borders Ronan Park. She said she and staff are heavily involved with outreach efforts in Ronan Park.
Rodríguez-Sánchez referenced the need to “tax the rich” and revive something along the lines of the Bring Chicago Home referendum, a campaign backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson to raise the city’s real estate transfer tax on property purchases over $1 million to fund up to $100 million annually for homeless support that ultimately failed in 2024.
“We want to continue to fight to make sure that we can get access to those resources and make sure that we can provide for everyone,” Rodríguez-Sánchez said.
But until a more permanent solution can be reached, she agrees that it’s good to use every available resource to provide people with housing — even if it’s not always the most optimal scenario.
Laude said he’s still puzzled as to why the city closed the Legion Park encampment, and that it was a community that took care of the park. He said he’s working with advocacy groups, like Parks for All, to develop amendments to the Park District’s encampment policy.
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“We shouldn’t be removed from a public place,” Laude said. “That is everybody’s place.”
Cameron said she felt very supported by the city and her caseworker during her journey to find housing. If she gets a job, she said her contract will require her to pay 30% of her income back to her housing provider, but she’s happy to take any job she can get.
Cameron returns to Ronan Park often to see her friends, some of whom are still waiting to receive their housing.
“I miss them,” Cameron said. “Even though I got a house, I still come every day.”