Homeless feared they’d be swept up in pre-Easter Clean-Up Week

A homeless encampment along the Dan Ryan Expressway received a spring cleaning Friday with all the customary drama that goes along with displacing the poor.

City notices setting a Friday deadline to move their tents fueled fears among the homeless people of a mass eviction. They worked through the night to gather up their belongings, then held a morning news conference to protest their removal.

This being Good Friday, the stakes were raised all around with a Naperville minister on hand to remind everyone that “they killed a homeless man about 2000 years ago today.”

In the end, though, not much really happened except for Illinois Department of Transportation crews removing truckloads of trash that had accumulated on the site.

The city’s Department of Family and Support Services said the operation was never intended to be anything other than a normal cleaning.

The homeless people weren’t so sure, but returned anyway and pitched their tents again.

There was no displacement, at least not to start the Easter weekend, but the homeless people said it’s only a matter of time before this spot is taken from them, too.

“They’re trying to get rid of us,” said Juan Matchain, 52, among many who have been down this road before.

Don Gorobegko said he stayed previously in a homeless camp located along the Chicago River south of Harrison, now the site of a major new luxury housing development under construction.

When they were kicked out of there, Gorobegko moved to another camp south of Roosevelt Road in the large undeveloped tract known as “Rezkoville”—in honor of its former owner, Tony Rezko, a politically-connected developer convicted in the Rod Blagojevich scandal.

After getting the boot from Rezkoville, Gorobegko said he came to this spot, which stretches from Roosevelt to Taylor along the right-of-way on the east side of the highway.

Gorobegko, 60, said this is his third stay at this particular location over a seven-year stretch of homelessness that began after he lost a machinist job at General Motors Electro-Motive Divison. He’s been here a year.

“I was the first guy to put a tent up out here. When I did it, everybody else started,” he said.

Most surprising to me was that I’d never even noticed this particular homeless camp, which in summer and fall is screened from view by scrub brush.

At least 20 people were living there in tents before the cleaning crews arrived Friday. Many of them scattered to avoid a possible confrontation with police.

Rebecca Ross Garza said she and her husband Angelo spent three years in Rezkoville before coming to this spot with their cat Rocky.

The Garzas said they became homeless after losing their Michigan home in a fire.

They came here because Chicago is more hospitable to the homeless, they said. But they would rather stay on the street than move to Pacific Garden Mission.

“This is one of the last spots for people to go to,” Angelo Garza said.

As rites of spring go in Chicago, the spring cleaning of the homeless is relatively new.

It used to be the city would clear out homeless camps year round as desired. Nowadays, the city tries to exercise restraint during the winter months when the homeless are most vulnerable. That’s progress of a sort.

Homeless people still regard the “sweeps” as harassment, but many on Friday also welcomed the removal of the trash, which they admitted was out of control.

They said they could do a better job of cleaning up after themselves if the city would give them a dumpster, or even better, a portable toilet.

At their press conference, organized with the assistance of one of the former occupants of the Uptown viaducts, the homeless people asked the city to find them housing.

But Gorobegko added a common refrain:

“If you can’t help us, leave us alone.”