A forensic investigation into the no-bid contracts, inflated hourly rates, and opaque vendor relationships that defined Chicago’s early response to the migrant crisis — and the insiders who profited.
Image directive: Create a pie chart showing the breakdown of Chicago’s migrant spending: Favorite Healthcare Staffing ($276.6M), Equitable Social Solutions ($76M), Polselli Properties ($28M), and other vendors. Alternatively, search Unsplash for “empty hotel hallway” or “government building Chicago.”
The First Contracts
When buses carrying asylum seekers began arriving in Chicago in late 2022, the city’s emergency response machinery kicked into gear. But what followed wasn’t a model of efficient crisis management — it was a masterclass in how political insiders convert public emergencies into private windfalls.
By the end of 2023, Chicago had spent at least $138 million on migrant housing, feeding, and care. More than $59 million came directly from Chicago taxpayers, with $95 million drawn from federal COVID-19 relief funds — pandemic money repurposed for a crisis that had nothing to do with COVID. Over the following two years, total spending would balloon to $638.7 million across all vendor contracts, shelter operations, and services.
The Favorite Healthcare Machine
No single vendor illustrates the problem more clearly than Favorite Healthcare Staffing. The company’s initial contract, awarded in September 2022, was valued at over $56 million. By October 2023, an additional $40 million renewal was approved. By 2024, Favorite Healthcare’s cumulative take from Chicago’s migrant response had reached $276.6 million — nearly half of all spending.
The hourly rates tell the story. Temporary nurses were billed at $135 per hour. Facility managers commanded $108 per hour. At peak spending in February 2023, Favorite Healthcare was billing the city as much as $6.5 million per week. One nurse invoiced $20,000 for a single week of work at a migrant shelter.
After public outcry, the city renegotiated rates, claiming savings of up to $3 million per week. But the fact that rates had been set so high in the first place — under emergency procurement rules that bypassed competitive bidding — raises fundamental questions about who was watching the checkbook.
The Shelter Lease Middlemen
Equitable Social Solutions received $76 million for a deceptively simple task: identifying and establishing shelter locations. Working through a subsidiary or partner entity called Reloshare, the company served as an intermediary between the city and property owners, crafting lease agreements for buildings converted into migrant housing.
Here’s what makes this arrangement remarkable: Reloshare was not listed on the city’s official spending dashboard despite being the primary intermediary for shelter leases. When journalists and oversight bodies requested details, the city stated it did not have copies of the full rental agreements for its own West Loop shelters. The opacity was not incidental — it was structural.
The Polselli Problem
Among the property owners profiting from the crisis, Michigan landlord Remo Polselli stands out. Polselli, who has a federal tax evasion history and previously served prison time, owns the Inn of Chicago and the old Standard Club building. The city paid $28 million to lease these two properties alone for migrant shelters — making Polselli the single largest landlord beneficiary of Chicago’s migrant response.
That a landlord with a federal criminal record for tax evasion could become the city’s most expensive shelter provider — while facing ongoing IRS issues — speaks to the total absence of due diligence in the emergency contracting process. No competitive bidding. No background checks that would have flagged a federal conviction. No apparent concern about the optics of funneling $28 million in public funds to a convicted tax cheat.
The Work Permit Bottleneck
Perhaps the cruelest irony of Chicago’s migrant spending spree is this: as of early 2024, federal officials had granted only 315 migrants permission to work in Chicago. The city was spending hundreds of millions to house and feed people who were legally prohibited from supporting themselves — creating a permanent dependency that required permanent spending.
The food service contracts followed a similar pattern. Initial providers — the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Open Kitchens, Chi-care, and hundreds of mutual aid volunteers — handled the early emergency response. But as the crisis was formalized through RFP processes, contracts went to larger operators: Seventy-Seven Communities (North Region) and 14 Parish (South Region).
The Accountability Gap
Chicago’s migrant response represents a case study in emergency procurement failure. The combination of no-bid contracts, opaque vendor relationships, stratospheric hourly rates, and convicted felons collecting millions in public funds should have triggered immediate oversight intervention. Instead, the spending machine rolled on, fueled by federal pandemic money that had been appropriated for an entirely different purpose.
The 2024 municipal budget debates would eventually force a reckoning, but by then the contracts were signed, the money was spent, and the politically connected vendors had already cashed their checks. Chicago’s migrant crisis was real. The suffering was real. But so was the grift — and the taxpayers who funded it deserve to know exactly where their money went.
Eduardo Bacci is an investigative journalist at The Investigative Journal. Data sources include Chicago Tribune investigations, the City of Chicago spending dashboard, NBC Chicago financial reporting, and municipal budget archives.