Johnson’s mental health plan starts small, carries big political implications

Good morning, Chicago.

At roughly 0.1% of the city’s recently passed $16.77 billion budget, the initial cost of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s effort to begin reopening Chicago’s city-run mental health clinics is minuscule.

But the political ramifications are potentially huge.

Johnson rode into office on a progressive wave powered by unions and activists who have long advocated that Chicago should return to having 19 city-run clinics, as it did in the 1980s, instead of just five.

The mayor’s answer in his first budget was far from a full response. While he cautioned supporters that reopening the clinics would take time, his budget called for restoring only two clinics and placing them in yet-to-be-determined locations.

Still, by including $5.2 million to expand mental health services and $15.9 million to double staffing for the city’s team of behavioral health professionals who respond to mental health and substance abuse crises, Johnson is trying to show he isn’t dropping the ball on the issue while preaching patience and signaling a more robust response is yet to come.

Read the full story from the Tribune’s Jake Sheridan.

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Mutual aid networks and free and charitable organizations have stepped up to provide health needs to migrants who are sleeping on the floor at police stations and waiting for space in one of the 26 brick-and-mortar shelters around the city.

But it is not uncommon for migrants to turn — or, in some cases, return — to police stations looking for basic medical resources, as necessities in shelters can be sparse or nonexistent. It’s not dissimilar from what migrants faced in their countries of origin.

When recently arrived migrants, mostly from Venezuela, began to show up at Juana Arreguin’s ice cream shop in Pilsen over the summer — some begging for money, others asking for a job — all she could do was feed them. Sometimes, she said, she would give them a few dollars or point them to someone who could maybe hire them.

Some of those new migrants can apply for job permits after President Joe Biden expedited work permits for migrants from mostly Venezuela, as well as Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti.

Though Arreguin celebrates the increased opportunities for newly arrived Venezuelans in Chicago, she feels abandoned. She couldn’t hold back the tears as she implored government officials to expand the program to other immigrant groups, like herself.

Danica Sun, 17, recalls the first moment she felt the call to do something for the environment was a bit cliché: As an elementary school kid, she was unnerved by one of the many viral photos of bedraggled, emaciated polar bears floating on melting slabs of ice.

Now, the high school senior’s activism has taken her to a faraway land and one much warmer than the North Pole — Dubai in the United Arab Emirates — for the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change conference or COP28.

Five years after federal agents raided then-Ald. Ed Burke’s City Hall office, jurors at his corruption trial last week got to hear what’s fast becoming known simply as the “tuna” call.

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Chicago is poised to see a double-digit percentage drop in homicides in 2023, welcome news for a freshman mayor and a police superintendent who took the reins of the department just a couple of months ago.

Illinois home values are up 4.5% year-over-year, which represents more than a $10,000 increase from October 2022. And in the last two years, home values in the state have risen almost 13% — or close to a $30,000 increase since 2021.

Coach Matt Eberflus has talked a lot this season about the learning curves for Bears rookies. Of the 10 players drafted, eight have received significant opportunities over the first 12 games and two are full-time starters. An undrafted rookie made a huge contribution midseason.

When her physically and intellectually disabled son William was aging out of his high school vocational training program, Joan Hallagan was concerned about his future — and that of his community.

Compelled to help, she and her sister Cathy Maassen opened Will’s Place, a nonprofit cafe employing people with disabilities. William reports there for work several days a week to help in the kitchen and welcome customers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Betsy Williams said she saw firsthand how food insecurity affected families in Rich Township High School District 227, as cars pulled up outside the district’s schools in Olympia Fields and Richton Park for curbside delivery of meals.

“I wanted to get something more sustainable that could help provide food throughout the year,” she said.