City to move people in Gompers Park homeless encampment to more permanent housing via city’s AME program

CHICAGO — After long delays, people living in a homeless encampment in Gompers Park on the city’s Northwest Side will get a chance to secure free support services and more stable, permanent housing.

The outreach by several city departments is part of what the city calls “accelerated moving events,” or AMEs. The AME in Gompers Park will begin Wednesday morning.

The city says it has moved about 3,000 people under the AME program — which it says is completely voluntary —since it started in 2020, and that it’s been coming to Gompers Park since the fall to work with those staying at the encampment there.

The city also says it’s been transparent with how Wednesday’s move in Gompers Park is going to happen and that it will be the 35th AME it has done over the past several years. Some community members, however, claim the city is not being completely transparent about the process.

According to the city, 29 people at the Gompers Park encampment will be moved Wednesday into more permanent housing, including into apartments in the City of Chicago.

“Ideally, everybody has the choice to move into the communities that they want to move into, and the types of apartments or dwelling units that they want to move into,” Sendy Soto, Chicago’s Chief Homelessness Officer, says. “But we don’t have that housing stock in the City of Chicago.

“What we will be offering (Wednesday) is apartments that landlords have opted to be part of (in the AME program). So if we don’t have landlords in the area of Mayfair that have opted into this program, we’re not able to provide service to (people who need housing) in the area of their choice.”

The city says it costs about $30,000 per each household every year for the AME program. With 28 households set to be moved on Wednesday, that equates to $840,000 annually for that move alone.

The city had budgeted $2.8 million for the AME program when it started in 2020. For 2025, the city has budgeted $25 million for the program, due to the end of federal funding the city had previously relied on.