“This doesn’t change that outlook,” the mayor’s senior adviser, Jason Lee, said. “We’re going to continue to lobby the federal government for more support as the situation becomes, frankly, more unstable.” The city so far has spent more than $138 million to care for the new arrivals.

And in the past months, several small business owners in Chicago have been hit by multiple smash-and-grab burglaries involving cars, also called “crash-and-grabs,” despite increased physical security such as shutters and riot glass for windows.

“The international crisis that we are experiencing right now is being subsidized by local economies,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told “CNN This Morning” Friday. “That is not sustainable, and that’s why we need Congress to actually have appropriations to make sure that what refugees from Ukraine receive, we have to ask … why aren’t those same support services being provided for individuals who are coming from the continent of Africa and Central and South America?”

“Though the mayor can boast that murder is down 13% in Chicago, according to the Daily Mail, crime in general — especially car theft and robbery — is up 17% in the Windy City. (Mayor Brandon) Johnson says reparations will help, and, in addition to $100 million for the prevention of violence, he has included in his 2024 budget $500,000 to establish a Commission on Restoration and Reparations.”

With the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine, Police Commander Jon Hein noted that there is a planned demonstration expected to take place New Year’s Eve, but he said police have been in contact with its organizers and the CPD is looking forward to “assisting them so they have a safe event.”

“Our cities have reached a point where we are either close to capacity or nearly out of room without significant intervention from the federal government,” Chicago’s Brandon Johnson said. “This mission will not be sustained.” In New York, Mayor Eric Adams recently slashed budgets for education and policing in order to cope with the costs of the crisis, and has warned it could “destroy” the city if it continues.

The poor college performance shows Chicago Public Schools is not producing high school graduates who are ready for college, so their opportunities and life outcomes are at greater risk. Low rates of proficiency plague CPS high school students, where just 22% of 11th grade students were proficient in reading in 2023 and 19% in math, according to the Illinois State Board of Education report card.

“So much is happening so close to this business, I just take it with a grain of salt,” said owner Marie Henderson, who turns 82 later this week. “We always have incidents in this neighborhood…We just hoping the area can get a little better so I can get a little more customers in here. You hope and you pray that things get better.”

Jose Tirado, the former head of the Chicago Police Department’s counterterrorism bureau, has led the emergency management office in an interim role since April. He has been appointed to the position permanently. And Lissette Castañeda, now the commissioner for the Department of Housing, has two decades of experience in affordable housing development, housing services and organizational leadership.

Dallas saw three of Wall Street’s largest banks start on new campuses this year, cementing their bets on one of the fastest-growing metros in one of the fastest-growing states. The industry’s rapid Texas expansion since the onset of the pandemic means the area now has more finance workers than Chicago or Los Angeles, trailing only New York. Asset managers of all sizes have been looking to cash in on the influx of wealth and people moving from the coasts to Dallas for cheaper housing and no state income tax.

“In the meantime, Gov. JB Pritzker has opened up 230 hotel rooms for migrants as local citizens demand a change in state and city policies. Given the anger of such residents, the city council has found a solution: just don’t let them vote. It appears something of a trend around the country.”

“We don’t want anyone dropped in our community and not have shelter, not have anything for them. We don’t want anyone to be here and not be aware of it,” Matteson Village President Sheila Chalmers-Currin said.

Stacey Freeman, the mother of three boys: “I am a Chicago Public Schools parent and I am baffled that my voice, and the voices of hundreds of thousands of parents like me, is not part of the conversation…Locking families into sending our children to their zoned school isn’t a decision that promotes equity, and it certainly doesn’t empower our community. Do you know what is empowering? Knowing your child will function better in a smaller, quieter environment and finding a pre-K program at a charter school that gives that to them.”

In recent years Chicago police and the CTA have sent more officers, unarmed security guards and K-9 teams to the train system in an attempt to bring the crime rate down, causing the CTA to project it would pay more than double the cost this year that it paid in 2022 for security services. But the perception of safety on the CTA is a key issue for the agency, and whether the crime rate and concerns about crime continue to fall could play a role in ongoing discussions about what the pandemic-era future of Chicago’s public transit should look like.