The city plans to open a homeless shelter in a hotel in the Streeterville neighborhood, which prompted a demonstration Wednesday among soon-to-be laid off hotel workers.
The 100 E. Chestnut St. site of the planned Streeterville shelter currently houses the Selina Chicago hotel. The shelter will be run using state funding for emergency and transitional housing, city officials said.
The move to open a new shelter comes as approaching cold weather and heavy demand for shelter from migrants stretch Chicago’s emergency housing stock. The 116-room property will be used to give homeless Chicagoans shelter for seven months, Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Mary May said.
A handful of Selina Hotel workers protested the layoffs outside the redbrick building, once home to Mike Ditka’s restaurant that closed during the pandemic and formerly called the Tremont Hotel.
At the drizzly afternoon protest, Angeyleah Campbell, a housekeeping supervisor who has worked for 25 years at the building, said she received a letter from management last month.
“I want to be able to keep food on the table and pay my bills,” she said.
Selina spokesperson Maca Capocci described the closure as “temporary” Wednesday in a statement to the Tribune. Some unionized staff will remain on-site to maintain the property, Capocci said.
Real estate investment firm Hotel Capital, the building’s owner, faced foreclosure in September on its $19.4 million mortgage, according to Cook County court records. Hotel Capital CEO Michael Collier was not immediately available for comment Wednesday, but pinned the foreclosure on Selina’s alleged failure to meet its obligations in a report by real estate news site The Real Deal.
Capocci denied that the foreclosure was a result of Selina not paying rent and called the accusation “false.”
“This has nothing to do with Selina,” the company spokesperson said. “The article implies Selina is the cause of the foreclosure when the landlord clearly did not meet its obligations well before Selina’s involvement.”
The hotel will cease operating at the site Friday, Capocci said. A Selina reservation manager told the Tribune Wednesday the closure came as a surprise.
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“We’re closing down the hotel. It was really internal, whatever happened,” said the manager, who shared her name as Helen S.
The woman had spent the morning contacting people who had reservations at the hotel to let them know they could no longer stay, though she declined to say how many reservations were canceled.
“It’s been a lot,” she said.
The state emergency and transitional housing grant will provide funding to nonprofit organizations and local governments for meals, shelter and support services. The Streeterville shelter will be staffed by Equitable Social Solutions, different from Favorite Staffing Healthcare — the contractor the city has used to provide shelter services to migrants.
News of the layoffs came as a shock to hotel workers. No one had been let go when the hotel was previously used to house migrants, workers said. Sixteen people were expected to lose their jobs starting Friday, ranging from front desk employees to housekeepers and engineers, according to the workers protesting Wednesday.
They held signs with their names and the number of years they had worked in the hospitality business: “Juana Buitron — Housekeeping 22 years,” and “Carla Criollo — Housekeeping 4 years.”
[ Homeless Chicagoans also living at police stations alongside migrants ]
Raised on the South Side, Campbell said she had been proud to be a part of the hotel’s initiative to house migrants.
“So why are we being kicked to the curb?” she said, in front of a crowd of advocates and reporters.
Linwei Xiao has been a front desk supervisor at Selina for five years. Though he knew the company was struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, he couldn’t believe the hotel was closing. Winter months are slower for the hotel industry, said Xiao, and he was worried about whether he’d be able to find a job.
“We’ve been through a rough time,” he told the Tribune, standing outside the hotel. “I see no hope. It seems like nothing can be changed.”
This is not the first Chicago hotel providing support for homeless residents. In June, city officials presented a proposal to turn the Diplomat Motel in Lincoln Square into transitional housing with on-site services for homeless residents — not migrants — of the ward. The City Council backed the plan in July.
The city’s shelter system — which never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic when the number of beds decreased — is straining under the arrival of 20, 400 migrants this year who need homes.
At the end of August, the city found that 6,139 residents were experiencing homelessness for its one-night count in 2023 — a significant rise over last year’s 3,875 estimate. Of those individuals, 2,196 were asylum-seekers.
But as the city scrambles to house thousands of migrants, residents in neighborhoods across Chicago say they have been blindsided by news of new city-run shelters.
Stephanie Willding, chief executive officer at the volunteer-based center Community Health, said she is concerned for people living outside as temperatures get colder, but there is a pervasive sense of fear from residents about the new shelters.
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“In the midst of a crisis, if we learned anything during the pandemic, it’s the importance of transparency, communication and collaboration,” she said. “Folks are finding themselves in Chicago, in the middle of winter, with very unstable housing situations that will impact their health and wellness.”
Karen Kent, president of Unite Here Local 1, which represents the hospitality workers, said her members take great care to provide hospitality to visitors in Chicago.
“Anytime there are guests in hotels, whatever kind of guests there are, our members are ready to serve,” she said. “What we’re looking for is an agreement, in writing, with a signature.”
Wilfred Kuiracocha, 70, who has worked for the hotel for 18 years, said he was facing a wall of uncertainty. He came to Chicago 32 years ago from Ecuador.
“I need to pay rent. I need to support my family,” he said in Spanish.
