Construction Project To Displace Homeless 'Tent City' Residents
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A federal judge has given dozens of homeless people living in tents beneath Lake Shore Drive until Monday to move out to make way for an expanded bicycle and running path.
And the process of packing has already begun for the homeless community at Wilson and Lawrence Avenues.
Unsure of where the residents of "Tent City" will be next week, volunteers from "Project I am" handed out sleeping bags that can be transformed into winter coats.
Tent City's unofficial mayor, Tom Gordon, said that he's putting his belongings into storage. Some are following his lead, while few have the promise of housing.
"I've been homeless several times before; I've been fighting homelessness, on and off, for about 15-20 years," Gordon said. "Every time I move into an SRO (single room occupancy) in the Uptown area, they want to sell it. This is why I'm here -- they keep selling the SROs."
As for the rest, they say they want to stay as a group. "They can find us better, and we can live a lot better together," one man said. "We're better in numbers than separate."
Gordon has not said where they intend to go, but it will be somewhere in the 46th ward.
