During recent winter weather, we saw once again how PRN’s push for better responses to extreme weather remains a crucial issue. There is a severe lack of support for residents in the evening and on weekends during cold snaps, heat waves, electric outages, floods, storms, and so on. The city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) is not the solution it appears to be. It is too close to the police and does not use public health criteria to guide its work. It is a top down organization and can overrule other departments.
One model that could be useful is Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Browser’s Hypothermia Awareness Pledge, an initiative between the city government, business, and community groups. https://hoodline.com/2025/11/mayor-bowser-launches-hypothermia-campaign-in-washington-d-c-advocates-community-support-for-homeless-neighbors/
Note particularly the definition of extreme cold and the action plan independent of the National Weather Service (NWS), an improvement over Chicago’s process.
D.C. and Chicago could improve their response by sending out warming buses to unhoused encampments which is a more effective strategy than trying to get people to go to shelters.
PRN wants to see an overhaul of the city’s philosophy in responding to extreme weather. Deployment of warming and cooling buses should be added to other ideas. One underlying problem is that privatization has weakened city services. City services, employees, and authority has been massively cut back and privatized compared to past decades. City departments changed from being direct service providers to overseers of contractors and contracted services. For example, city departments such as DFSS no longer directly inspect any of the city’s private shelters and other sites, instead DFSS reads the reports, the evaluations and more from the private provider.
So there is much to do in improving Chicago’s response to extreme weather. In a few months, we will be talking again about deadly heat waves. Let’s learn about what’s working in D.C. and elsewhere and make changes in Chicago.