City Contractor ‘Failed’ Clients as Migrant Shelter Complaints Mounted, Staffers Say
By Emeline Posner, Photography by Efrain Soriano for Borderless Magazine
“Reina Isabel Jerez Garcia filed a grievance with the City of Chicago last fall when staff started serving smaller meals at the city-funded migrant shelter where she and her teenage son were staying.
Dinner was a scoop of rice and a couple of pieces of meat at the Super 8, a compact motel building on the far North Side. The city’s main shelter contractor, Kansas City-based Favorite Healthcare Staffing, opened the shelter at the Super 8 in July 2023.”
Reina Jerez Garcia, pictured on the far South Side with her husband, German Median, and sons, Victor Garcia, William Garcia and Yefferson Garcia, lived in a shelter on Chicago’s far North Side run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing. Garcia said she received unacceptably small food portions and limited drinking water when she lived at the shelter.
Reina Jerez Garcia embraces her husband, German Medina, who, along with their two younger sons, reunited with Reina in Chicago earlier this year.
Reina Isabel Jerez Garcia in Pullman Park on the far South Side.
