Flor Mata, a 21-year-old Portage Park resident, attended Saturday’s event for the first time, motivated by her passion for affordable housing. Mata said she felt compelled to get involved after learning about housing issues during a summer internship with Palenque LSNA.

She emphasized the need for community awareness and action. “I definitely think it’s important for people to become more informed and learn about what they can do and what their actions can do to impact other people’s lives,” she said. “These vacant houses could be used by people who really need them, especially during the winter and the holiday season.”

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LOGAN SQUARE — Three Logan Square homes will soon house families looking to stay in the gentrifying neighborhood after two longtime neighbors donated their buildings — worth more than $1.5 million combined — to an affordable homeownership program.

Sally Hamann, 76, and Anne Scheetz, 73, community activists and friends who have been fighting for the preservation of affordable housing in Logan Square since 2015, donated their workers cottages to the Here to Stay Community Land Trust, which helps younger families with roots in the area become homeowners.

“This was a fulfillment of a dream that we were to donate these two houses that belonged to my husband and me,” said Scheetz, who lived in Logan Square from 1986 through last year.

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We caught up with Soto-Espinoza this month. Today, she’s a unconditional cheerleader for the program, and she continues to lead trainings and meetings for families, keeping them running virtually through the pandemic. 

“It’s not about the hierarchy, but it’s always about the goal. It’s about inspiring and admiring each other,” she said. “Once you do that change within yourself, you’re able to achieve a change in the schools and our communities. We’re not just parents in schools. We’re activists, we’re organizers.”

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"Delgado works as a special education aide in the junior high program at Kelvyn Park High School in the Hermosa neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest side. She spends all day, everyday shadowing her assigned students.

She became an aide through Palenque LSNA, a group formerly known as Logan Square Neighborhood Association. She started in the parent mentor program, which has been sending parents and others into classrooms to support teachers for nearly 30 years.

With state funding, Palenque last year formalized the program to help parent mentors become aides and already has helped 132 parent mentors get credentialed."

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Palenque LSNA Executive Director Juliet de Jesus Alejandre said both ballot questions are based on xenophobic rhetoric and should be rejected.
“We are angry that in 2023 in Chicago an anti-immigrant ballot question is given the light of day,” de Jesus Alejandre said. “It does nothing but sow harmful divisions. It does not address the solutions our city and new arrivals are facing. And it does nothing to address the challenges of disinvested communities that have been here for generations in this community.”

There are nearly 12,100 migrants in city shelters as well as an additional 3,100 men, women and children sleeping at police stations across the city and at O’Hare International Airport.

Of those waiting for a bed to open in a city shelter, approximately 1,500 men, women and children are sleeping in thin tents outside police stations across the city, protected from the cold, wet concrete by only tarps or cardboard, according to data provided by Deputy Mayor for Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights Beatriz Ponce de León.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has surged as the humanitarian crisis gripping the city has escalated, dismaying groups that have worked for decades to welcome immigrants to Chicago.

Palenque LSNA is part of a coalition of community groups led by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights whose members held a rally last Thursday outside City Hall to call on City Council members to reject efforts to put either one of those questions to voters, or to repeal the city’s Welcoming City ordinance.

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At a news conference Tuesday afternoon on Daley Plaza, immigrant rights groups demanded that more be done to support migrants arriving in Chicago.

“They are looking for safe, dignified housing; they are looking for work and to put food on the table,” said Juan Pablo Herrera from Palenque LSNA.

But the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said what is needed most is money, which has yet to materialize so far.

“The federal government needs to stand up. Joe Biden needs to stand up and Congress needs to stand up,” said Diego Samayoa of Centro Romano.

Dozens of groups have been working with the more than 18,000 migrants who have come to Chicago from the Southern border states over the past year.

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Last year, Pearlie Aaron volunteered as a parent mentor at the school her 10-year-old daughter attends — McKinley Elementary in Bellwood School District 88. Aaron got a chance to work with students on classroom assignments and receive professional development with other parent mentors for about two hours a day.

Now, Aaron is a program coordinator at McKinley for the Parent Mentor Program, a state-funded initiative run by Palenque Liberating Spaces through Neighborhood Action and the Southwest Organizing Project.

On Friday, Aaron and hundreds of other parent program coordinators  — mostly Black and Latino women from Chicago and the suburbs — sat in a packed auditorium at Harry S. Truman Community College on the city’s North Side to celebrate the start of a new school year. 

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Todos Ponen - meaning everyone pitches in - is a project founded by Chef Dávila back in the heat of the pandemic.

"We just saw there was really a huge need for help all around with small businesses, with industry workers, hospitality workers, and then especially undocumented workers," Dávila said.

Partnering with community organization Palenque lsna, the team at Mi Tocaya began churning out thousands of meals.

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The city plans to overhaul the train station canopy as part of the square redesign project. It will be the first major renovation of the structure since it was built more than 50 years ago.

LOGAN SQUARE — The Logan Square Blue Line station canopy is getting a makeover as part of the much-anticipated redesign project.

The city’s Department of Transportation is working with Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s 35th Ward office and community groups on the first major renovation of the canopy since it was built more than 50 years ago.

The plan is in the early stages, but officials want to replace the existing plexiglass structure with a sculptural covering with multi-colored lights and sky lights, according to new renderings. Local firm Jacobs Engineering has been tapped to design the project.

Neighborhood groups Logan Square Preservation and Palenque LSNA and the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce are reviewing the proposal, but the design shown in renderings hasn’t been finalized, city spokeswoman Erica Schroeder said.

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Construction is underway for a new affordable housing development in Logan Square that aims to provide families and longtime residents with 89 affordable housing units in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

The two-building, multi-family development Encuentro Square is aimed at those with a household income no more than 60% of the Chicago Area Median Income. For a family of four, for instance, that amount is $66,180.

The development will be located near the western edge of the neighborhood bordering Hermosa and Humboldt Park at 3759 W. Cortland St. and 1844 N. Ridgeway Ave.

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