RETRIEVING DOCUMENT
Mrs. Adaeze Mbeki has seventeen days of city relocation assistance left.
I know this because I called her last Tuesday. She counts. The city letter says the assistance period ends on day forty-three. It started on May 29th, which is the day after the GDA grey vehicles arrived and the day before settlement letters went out. She is on day twenty-six.
She has not found a place. Her price range is $850 a month, which in Chicago gets you a one-bedroom in Pullman or a studio in Auburn Gresham. She has applied to eleven units. Three did not respond. Four asked for proof of income she cannot currently provide because her employer's building on Wabash lost its windows and has been closed for renovation. Two told her the unit had already been rented. Two turned her down in writing. She has kept every email.
On Thursday morning, someone knocked on her door at the school gymnasium where she is staying with her daughter. He said he was from the Chicago Housing Transition Office and that he was there to help her find placement. He had a lanyard and a clipboard and a form she had not seen before. She asked for a business card. He did not have one. She told him she wanted to call and confirm his office before signing anything. He said that was fine and left a phone number.
I called the number. It rang six times and went to voicemail. The voicemail box was full.
I searched the City of Chicago's organizational chart, which is publicly accessible through the city clerk's website. There is no Chicago Housing Transition Office. There is a Department of Housing. There is a Mayor's Office of Housing and Economic Development. There is no Chicago Housing Transition Office.
The UIAP phone number has been disconnected since I first reported it on May 31st. I have called it forty-one times. This week, twice, it did not play the disconnected message. Both times it rang, briefly, then went silent. I stayed on the line for ninety seconds each time. Nothing.
Our Atlanta source signed the Metropolitan Recovery Support Initiative paperwork in November 2024, following a superhuman incident I am not going to characterize further because she asked me not to. She is a woman in her fifties who worked in insurance before the incident and now does not. She signed because the 72-hour window was expiring and she needed the money. She received $11,400.
Three weeks after signing, she received a letter on plain white paper, no letterhead, no return address. The letter reminded her of the terms of her agreement and added, in a single additional paragraph, that those terms included not discussing "the nature, cause, or attribution of the damage" with "any representative of the media, legal profession, or governmental agency not party to this agreement." The MRSI paperwork she signed said nothing about post-disbursement contact. She has the original. She showed it to me. It used the same typeface as the MRSI form. It was signed "Administrative Services, MRSI."
She asked if I thought she could get out of it.
I told her I was a journalist, not a lawyer.
She said she knew. She asked anyway.
Darius has found the Columbus program — the Midwest Urban Recovery Initiative, MURI — in a Franklin County court record. A woman filed a small claims case in December 2024 because the MURI settlement check bounced. The case was dismissed in January, with a note that the parties had reached a separate resolution. The claimant's name is Terri Walcott. Her address of record is a Columbus Public Library branch.
We have not yet reached Ms. Walcott.
Mrs. Mbeki's daughter is eight. She brought a backpack to the gymnasium. She has been sleeping in a cot next to her mother's for twenty-six days.
Seventeen more days until the clock runs out. I will keep counting.