Under HB 1492, homeless will overwhelm our parks
Imagine you are a homebuyer looking for a house on Chicago’s North Side -- and you finally find the home of your dreams -- a brick ranch in Hollywood Park south of Peterson that is within your budget. And adjacent to the backyard is sprawling Legion Park. You tell your spouse that your children can play in the park -- and both of you can look out from your kitchen window as they do just that.
A bit farther inside the park -- but not too far -- are playgrounds, baseball fields, tennis courts, and a trail that eventually connects to the Skokie North Shore Sculpture Park.
So, your family moves into that ranch home. But in the next-door park, so do some homeless people. Soon there are over 20 tents, some of them are large ice-fishing tents.
Your new neighbors have built a 21st-century Hooverville next to your dream home.
Twice, as most recently as this March, the Chicago Park District removed all the tents, but these tent cities can legally return to Legion Park and other parks and public places, statewide, if House Bill 1429, the Homeless Bill of Rights, becomes law.
Making tent cities legal
Introduced in January by Rep. Kevin Olickal, a Democrat from Skokie, whose 16th District also covers West Ridge on Chicago’s North Side, in its current form, his bill will prevent local officials from prosecuting, arresting or fining homeless people “for occupying or engaging in life-sustaining activities on public property.”
The legislation is vague when it needs to be. “Protecting oneself from the elements" is allowed -- which means tents are permitted for the homeless in public areas. But there are exceptions written in for emergencies, such as natural disasters and health concerns. Typhus, a group of infections spread by unsanitary conditions that was until recently rare in the United States, would presumably be such a concern.
In 2025, there were over 200 documented cases of flea-borne typhus in the Los Angeles area -- most of them connected to homeless camps.
In a rare on-target op-ed, the Chicago Tribune editorial board raised some good points about the perils of homeless tent cities.
“With these settlements come reports of unsanitary and dangerous conditions, including reports of public sex, drug and alcohol use, and fecal matter in the parks.
In March, a fire destroyed 15 tents at Legion Park, with ‘dozens’ of propane tanks found on the scene, according to Block Club Chicago. It wasn’t the first blaze in the park — in July 2025, another fire took place at a Legion Park encampment, sending smoke pluming up into the sky. Propane tanks were also found on that scene.”
Propane use is likely deemed as “life-sustaining activities on public property” by Olickal’s legislation. Those fires the Tribune mentioned were extinguished promptly by the Chicago Fire Department. But if it’s a busy day for the CFD, or if a fire breaks out during a drought summer, seemingly harmless grass fires in parks can quickly spread to homes.
Home rule powers for larger municipalities — Chicago is one — won’t be able to supersede HB1429, it’s written into the legislation.
Chicago, the Tribune editorial correctly points out, will likely bear the brunt of legalized homeless tent cities in Illinois.
Homeless encampments are not nice places to visit
Homeless advocates typically portray whom they call “unhoused persons” as down-on-their-luck unfortunate people who have endured some bad breaks, such as Francis Phelan, the main character of the novel Ironweed, who was played by Jack Nicholson in the film version. Or more quaintly, the Bird Lady friend of Kevin McCallister in the film Home Alone 2.
In reality, most homeless people are mentally ill, some severely so. They need medical treatment and qualified help from trained social workers.
One such person who would likely need such help is the man who said he was "in charge" of the former homeless encampment that was adjacent to the Dan Ryan Expressway.
In 2020, I dropped off a client at his home near Des Plaines Street south of the Loop. He lived a block from the tent city next to the Ryan. One of my hobbies is photography, so I walked over to the camp, and I snapped a few photos of the tents, but none of people.
That man who said he was “in charge,” who was shirtless and who also appeared to have a scar on his chest from a bullet wound, started screaming at me. I couldn’t make out everything he said, but he frantically kept shouting the word "trespassing." He was correct, we were both standing on state-owned land. I left, but he chased me away from “his property.” Fortunately, he was not a very fast runner.
Shortly before the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago in 2024, the Dan Ryan tent city was emptied by authorities. Appearances matter to the left.
Alright, many people might declare that by invading "his" territory I was looking for trouble and that I deserved to be “evicted” and more. Perhaps they would be right.
Now, let’s alter the scene and instead of some nosy jerk photographer snapping pics of tents next to an expressway, imagine a young boy who enters the next homeless camp at Legion Park seeking a baseball that soared too far -- or an errant kite -- and he unwittingly confronts the "man in charge" of that tent city — and that man is in a foul mood.
Whose parks? Our parks, but don’t move into them
Parks are public land and they are meant to be for everyone. But that does not mean anyone should live there. And at some point, such parks with homeless encampments will in essence belong to them, because almost everyone else, including of course people who buy homes so they could live next to parks, will be terrified of entering them.
Understandably, residents tend to be hostile to having tent cities near their homes.
Olickal's bill has many Democrat co-sponsors, including some from Chicago. They include Kelly Cassidy, who introduced legislation this year to ban the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, and Will Guzzardi, who introduced a bill last year to legalize prostitution in Illinois. Cassidy is a co-sponsor of that legislation.
As for Olickal, he’s a co-sponsor of Cassidy’s anti-facial recognition bill.
“Elections have consequences,” Barack Obama famously remarked. And sadly, because of partisan gerrymandering, the Illinois General Assembly has few moderates, the type of people from either party who would stand up and holler, “You want to do WHAT?!”
Currently HB1429 sits with House Rules Committee. If it passes the House and then the Senate approves it, look for Governor J.B. Pritzker to sign the bill into law. Pritzker rarely vetoes legislation.
If you object to HB1429, contact your state representative and senator.
