Help Folks Facing Housing Insecurity & Precarity
The AID&RAGE! Mutual Aid (ARMA) collective consists of a group of close friends scattered across SouthEast/West Chicago and Albany Park currently raising funds to support ongoing redistributive efforts that aim to provide survival supplies and support resources/services directly to folks facing housing insecurity and precarity. So far, we’ve built some amazing relationships with folks from several encampments in Pilsen and Chinatown and we would like to continue showing up for our neighbors in a consistent, long-term basis.
February was the coldest month Chicago has lived through in a while and we are still experiencing below freezing temperatures. Even when temperatures dropped dangerously below 0ºF for several weeks, we failed to see the city and its leadership provide any form of comprehensive and dependable aid for folks without warm, safe shelter. We witnessed:
- The city providing insufficient forms of shelter, refusing to extend warming center hours and a general negligence and disinterest towards the well-being of its housing insecure residents
- The city providing incomplete and often inaccurate information about shelter access and resources
- Visits from city workers to encampments resulting in harassment of residents
- Individuals at the encampment on 51st and Wentworth had their belongings thrown away by the city. A local activist had procured hotels for all the residents of that camp, given that they were at great risk of hypothermia due to the subfreezing temperatures. The city then took the opportunity (without consent and prior warning) to completely clear the encampment out during the residents' absence
It is more evident than ever that we cannot wait for aid and support to come from this city or its leadership and only
WE KEEP US WARM,
WE KEEP US SAFE.
With this in mind, we have already redistributed about $3500 in survival resources in February alone—we have a public Google drive document outlining where the funds have gone for transparency (tinyurl.com/WinterAidReport). We have now set up this GoFundMe as our main fundraising source to cover expenses for survival supplies, support services/resources and temporary housing for folks in need for the next 2 months. We will be updating this page frequently and making sure donors are informed of where their contributions are going. Thank you all so much for your donations and for being a part of this movement of mutual love, support and care!
