CHICAGO, 9/8/17 — This afternoon a federal court judge set a 10 am, Thursday, Sept. 14 hearing to determine the fate of an injunction brought by activists aiming to stop a threatened September 18th eviction of homeless people living underneath Lake Shore Drive bridge viaducts in the city’s Uptown neighborhood.
The hearing will be held in Judge Sidney Schenkier’s courtroom number 1843 at the US District Courthouse for the Northern District of Illinois, 219 S. Dearborn Street.
The motion [www.scribd.com/document/358322045/Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction-to-Stop-LSD-Viaducts-Evictions] for the injunction is part of a suit [www.scribd.com/document/357300674/Tent-City-Alternative-to-LSD-Viaducts-and-Andy-Thayer-v-Chicago] against the City for failing to allow homeless people to congregate in another area while Lake Shore Drive viaducts are reconstructed — the pedestrian mall in front of the shuttered Stewart School in the 4500 block of N. Kenmore. On September 26, 2016, a private contractor working in coordination with about a dozen Chicago Police fenced off the pedestrian mall under the guise of a phony construction permit, evicting homeless people from the area. No construction occurred and City Attorney Kelley A. Gandurski later admitted that the erection of the fence was “illegal.”
The proposed injunction demands that the City either permanently house the homeless or allow them to have tents in a location with similar visibility and security.
Attorneys for the suit, Tent City Alternative to LSD Viaducts and Andy Thayer v. City of Chicago, et al., No. 17 CV 4518, are Jeffrey Frank, Susan Hathaway Ritacca of Susan Ritacca Law Office, Alan Mills of Uptown People’s Law Center, Molly Armour of the Law Office of Molly Armour, and Adele D. Nicholas of the Law Office of Adele D. Nicholas.
* From a press release made jointly by Uptown Tent City Organizers and Uptown People’s Law Center.