The Restore Gompers Park Coalition agrees with Chicago Park District CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s statement in the recent editorial that “long term, there should not be encampments in our parks” (“Ramirez-Rosa, a strikingly competent parks administrator,” Sept. 18). Indeed, “parks are for everyone,” as the Tribune Editorial Board notes. That means they must remain clean, safe and accessible. Chicago’s parks were never intended to serve as long-term housing sites.
Yet on the Northwest Side, encampments have become a long-term reality. The community surrounding Gompers Park experienced encampments over three years. Today, Eugene Field Park directly across the street has had an encampment for about a year and a half.
Chicagoans care about people experiencing homelessness and want real solutions. A tent in a public park is not a solution, particularly with winter approaching. Leaving people in tents for months or years does not resolve homelessness; it shifts the responsibility onto the Park District, surrounding communities and public agencies. It perpetuates unsafe, unsanitary conditions.
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Our coalition advocated for rapid rehousing for the few dozen living at Gompers. After more than a year of petitions, meetings with elected officials, media outreach and testimony to the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners, assistance arrived in March 2025. Nineteen people accepted assistance. Six were awaiting permanent housing and moved temporarily across the street to Eugene Field Park. A year and a half later later, those six tents have grown to more than 30 between two encampment areas.
The consequences extend beyond the tents. Eugene Field Park has experienced fires, theft, drug activity, assault and battery, significant dumping and environmental damage. During a recent walk-through with city officials, an encampment resident asked for help after witnessing people entering the encampment and assaulting and robbing residents.
This is not a satisfactory outcome for anyone — not people experiencing homelessness, the surrounding community or the institutions serving vulnerable Chicagoans.
Chicago should expand the housing solutions it considers. We advocate for transitional tiny-home communities with supportive services on vacant government land — not in public parks. We are working with a Chicago engineering firm on a single room occupancy-style model that is code-compliant. It could be deployed within six months.
Compassion means connecting people with housing, treatment and supportive services, not leaving them in tents indefinitely. Chicago can protect its public parks while pursuing humane, housing-focused solutions for people experiencing homelessness.
— Lynn Burmeister, Terry Donato, Nicole Foster and Lisa Stringer, Restore Gompers Park Coalition
How Chicago can protect birds
As the city ranked as posing the greatest threat to migratory birds in the United States, Chicago has an obligation to take action to protect the millions of birds that travel through this region every fall and spring. A proposed bird-friendly building design ordinance is the single biggest action the city can take. Birds rely on Chicago as a place to rest and refuel along their journeys of hundreds or thousands of miles across the globe.
Each year, tens of thousands of birds are injured and killed when they collide with the dangerous glass features found in structures throughout the city. We saw Chicago’s window collision crisis highlighted in 2023 when more than 1,000 birds died in a single morning at McCormick Place. This situation is urgent with most bird populations facing significant declines.
Migratory birds are critical and irreplaceable parts of healthy local and global environments and appreciated by thousands of residents and tourists year-round. In one year alone, that enjoyment of birds supported 1.4 million jobs and generated a total of $279.5 billion in total economic output in the U.S.
The good news is that solutions exist and buildings can be made safer for birds. A growing number of bird-friendly methods and materials have become available to use at negligible to no additional cost to building projects, making window strike prevention easier. Including bird protection from the start of the design process also removes the need to install costly collision-preventing retrofits post-construction. Bird-friendly design measures have been effectively mandated with no impediment to development in cities including New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and locally in Evanston, Lake County and Skokie.
A bird-friendly building design ordinance introduced by Aldermen Maria Hadden, Brian Hopkins and Ruth Cruz needs the support of Chicago citizens, the City Council and other city officials to require that new construction and major renovations include effective levels of bird protection. The ordinance would ensure that no new dangerous buildings are added to those already taking a toll on bird life in Chicago. Requiring bird safety measures is a must; a voluntary ask will not suffice.
The Chicago Collisions Coalition encourages Chicago residents to use its letter template to contact their City Council members today.
Chicago — a city famous for its architectural innovations — should be proud to put strong bird-friendly building design protections in place for the valuable and irreplaceable wild birds it is privileged to host.
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— Bryan Lenz, glass collisions program director, American Bird Conservancy, and Annette Prince, director, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors
China’s tactics undermine peace
Lyle Goldstein’s op-ed on Sept. 13 (“How Trump’s summit with Xi can yield dividends”) mistakenly overlooks Beijing’s continued use of gray-zone tactics to undermine peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region — actions that fundamentally disrupt the current international rules-based order.
We fully understand the desire of the United States and China to stabilize their bilateral relationship through presidential summits. Such efforts, however, should not come at the expense of the interests of like-minded allies and partners. Fortunately, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have repeatedly emphasized that U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged and that the U.S. attaches great importance to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
As a responsible stakeholder, Taiwan continues to strengthen its self-defense capabilities and remains firmly committed to cooperating with the U.S. and other nations that cherish freedom and democracy to jointly safeguard peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Taiwan’s commitment to maintaining the status quo has never wavered, nor does it intend to provoke any tensions. President Lai Ching-te has repeatedly emphasized that “peace is the only option” and that maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait is both Taiwan’s consistent position and a shared consensus within the international community.
On the contrary, China’s persistent verbal attacks and military intimidation against Taiwan — including military exercises, gray-zone threats and cognitive warfare — are the true root cause undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait; this is a serious challenge that the entire world must confront squarely, as it cannot be ignored.
Stable U.S.-China relations and robust U.S.-Taiwan relations are not mutually exclusive, nor does the interaction between the U.S. and China affect the continued deepening of cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwan across various fields. As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan will continue to work with the United States and other like-minded nations to uphold the rules-based international order and contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
— Dennis Yen-Feng Lei, director general, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Chicago
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].