Chicago SubX.News® Street Report | March 11, 2026
Empty CHA buildings, new tent cities under the Dan Ryan, and a day of shootings that exposes what the city has and what it refuses to use.
Two Tracks at the Same Time
Regional disaster and the city itself exposing two very different responses.
Track one: tornado damage across Kankakee County and Northwest Indiana the night before. Two people killed in Lake Village. Red Cross shelters opened at Kankakee Community College with food, phone charging, and support for displaced families. Response teams had already been preparing for days ahead of the storms.
State resources mobilized.
Track two: Chicago right now. Cold, gray, flurries, real feel in the 20s. Expressways slowed by potholes and crashes. Scanner already active with shootings, thefts, and disturbances. People living in tents and cardboard shelters for months or years.
Empty Buildings vs. People on the Street
Along the Magnificent Mile the contrast shows itself quickly. Dark towers, empty floors, and “coming soon” signs hanging on commercial high-rises.
Empty square footage everywhere. Human beings surviving in the gaps.
Dozens of cops and city workers walk in groups and park in the medians doing who knows what, guarding plywood-covered storefronts while people living on the street sit feet away. Many times walking past those people they are sworn to serve and protect.
This is the cycle of selfishness visible from the driver’s seat.
At Michigan and Wacker the pattern becomes personal.
A familiar figure approaches.
Mud, previously interviewed on the Westside. A white man with no arms, a longtime drug addict who often panhandles near Madison and Cicero.
He recognizes the Jeep used during the reporting and comes over to say hello.
No request for money. No confrontation. Just a quick greeting.
People who saw earlier interviews recognize him. Mud laughs, waves the way he can, then heads back toward the sidewalk.
From there the drive continues south into the Loop.
Only a few blocks away the contradictions become even harder to ignore.
Ida B. Wells and State Street – Arson, Robert Morris, and Migrant Contrast
The conversation turns personal for a moment.
You want a sandwich tonight or something? You hungry or not?
The man nods.
I won’t put you on camera.
You want to get on TV or not?
Say hello to people and say what’s going on.
He nods no.
Then the question comes back to the fire.
Did they ever catch the arsonist yet, the guy that tried to kill you guys?
The man says they caught him but let him go.
And he was a migrant, right?
Yep.
The conversation drifts back to the bigger question.
How come when the migrants came here they get a hotel and we don’t Americans?
Looking around at the officers nearby, the next question follows.
I see all these cops on the street. Why aren’t they helping you? Why aren’t they making a phone call to take you in?
Because they don’t care.
The answer hangs in the air.
Cycle of selfishness.
That’s the theme today.
The cycle of selfishness.
Then the focus shifts back to the empty building towering above the sidewalk.
Above the sidewalk the Robert Morris building stretches the length of the block. Four or five stories high. Thousands of people could fit inside the building.
Instead people remain on the sidewalk below.
That is the cycle of selfishness.
Traffic moving along State Street. Downtown preparing for St. Patrick’s Day crowds.
Police cars nearby. City workers along the sidewalks.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries circulating through the same streets. Yet the burned shelter remains on the pavement.
And the building above remains empty.
Cycle of selfishness.
Canalport Under the Dan Ryan – New Tents
Under the Dan Ryan Expressway at Canalport Avenue. Dinner time. 6:30 p.m.
Rows of brand new tents, not old or scavenged, line both sides of the underpass.
Same color.
Same shape.
Same condition.
Dozens of them stretching down the sidewalk under the expressway. One man sleeping on a bare metal bed frame under the bridge.
Encampments have been in this area for years.
People pushed from other locations end up here, including those displaced from the Roosevelt and Des Plaines encampment closed before the Democratic National Convention, when the city spent about $800,000 fencing out the homeless and pushing them toward 14th and Ruble in the name of political theater.
North Park and Legion Park camps scheduled for closure.
The pattern repeats. Encampments cleared in one place. Reappear in another.
Someone has money to organize this.
Someone has money to buy the tents.
Someone has money to deliver them.
But the same system that can distribute tents by the dozen cannot open empty buildings by the dozen.
The same city that can coordinate tents under an expressway cannot coordinate housing blocks away.
People survive under the highway.
Buildings sit empty across the city.
Cycle of selfishness.
Loomis Courts and ABLA – Boarded Housing in the Shadow of Downtown
A few minutes away the landscape changes again. Loomis Courts and the former ABLA Homes sit just west of downtown near the UIC Medical District, a stretch of public housing that once held hundreds of families within walking distance of the Loop.
Rows of mid-rise buildings and brick row houses stand quiet. Windows are boarded, doors sealed, and entire buildings sit empty where people once lived.
These are public housing units built with public money. Housing that once served working families now sits silent only a mile from downtown Chicago.
One detail stands out immediately at the entrance to the property. The Chicago Housing Authority sign has been painted over. Not replaced or updated. Simply covered with paint.
No construction crews are visible. No equipment sits on the lots. No workers move through the buildings. Just plywood over windows and quiet streets where residents once lived.
Estimates suggest roughly 150 to 200 housing units remain vacant between the Loomis Courts towers and the nearby row houses.
Blocks of housing owned by the city remain empty while tents line sidewalks under expressways only minutes away.
The distance between the two locations is measured in minutes. The gap between them is measured in political will.
Cycle of selfishness.
Juvie Next Door – Locked Youth and Empty Housing
Only a few blocks from the boarded Loomis Courts and former ABLA Homes sits the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. The complex is surrounded by fencing, cameras, and controlled gates, a secure facility holding teenagers from across Chicago while their cases move through the court system.
Many of the young men inside come from the same neighborhoods where public housing once stood. Many grew up in communities that once filled the Loomis Courts and ABLA apartments now sitting boarded and empty nearby.
The distance between the detention center and the vacant housing is short, only a few blocks across the Near West Side.
Rows of apartments that once held families now sit sealed with plywood. Buildings that could be repaired, cleaned, and rebuilt remain unused.
Work exists in those structures. Carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, masonry, and basic construction trades could all be part of restoring the buildings.
Instead the housing sits empty while the young men remain locked inside the detention center nearby.
One system holds people. Another system holds land.
Both remain idle while the city debates policy and spends millions on programs that rarely reach the street.
Cycle of selfishness.
While the camera rolled past empty buildings and new tents, the scanner never stopped — here’s what Chicago sounded like on March 11th
The police scanner carried the background reality of the city.
Shootings, threats, and a fatal hit-and-run moved across the radio throughout the day.
Crime Blotter for March 11, 2026
Chicago Violence Totals (March 11, 2026)
3 killed | 2 wounded by gunfire | 1 fatal hit-and-run
11:41 a.m. – In the 4100 block of W. Adams Street (11th District), a male in his 30s was shot multiple times while walking and was pronounced at Mount Sinai Hospital after the offender fled westbound.
1:15 p.m. – In the 4900 block of W. Walton Street (15th District), an 18-year-old male standing on the sidewalk was shot in the right hip by an offender in a passing vehicle and transported to Mount Sinai in critical condition.
4:20–4:30 p.m. – At Wadsworth School, 6650 S. Ellis Avenue, a parent disturbance escalated into verbal threats to blow up the school and kill everyone inside, later determined not to be a bonafide bomb threat.
4:28 p.m. – In the 9000 block of S. Eggleston Avenue (22nd District), a 21-year-old male was shot in the neck, transported to Christ Hospital, and later pronounced.
5:55 p.m. – At 1312 W. 73rd Place, a man in a neon jacket was reported selling drugs in an alley while armed with a gun before retreating into a residence.
6:30 p.m. – On CTA bus #8677 near 71st Street and King Drive, a male in a black hoodie was reported yelling, threatening the driver and passengers, and refusing to exit until police arrived.
7:43 p.m. – In the 100 block of N. Lotus Avenue (15th District), two men were shot inside an apartment, with a 32-year-old man wounded in the hand and a 33-year-old man fatally shot and pronounced at Mount Sinai Hospital.
7:50 p.m. – At 7859 S. Euclid Avenue, police responded to a domestic incident where a boyfriend armed with a knife barricaded himself inside the home.
10:01 p.m. – In the 2100 block of E. 83rd Street (4th District), a 32-year-old woman suffered fatal injuries consistent with a hit-and-run and was pronounced at University of Chicago Hospital after the striking vehicle fled.
5:30–7:30 p.m. – A copper Kia SUV was reported stolen and tracked near Washington and Pulaski as a fresh “straight steal,” while a black 2014 Mercedes GL was located and recovered by police during the same evening window.
What We Learing
Taken together, the day’s scenes reveal the same contradiction repeated across the city.
Empty buildings stand blocks from people sleeping under expressways. Public housing sits boarded while tents line sidewalks. Young men fill detention centers while construction-ready buildings remain sealed with plywood.
At the same time the police radio continues its steady rhythm of shootings, threats, and emergencies moving from one district to the next.
The resources exist. The buildings exist. The manpower exists.
But the pieces never come together for the people living at the bottom of the system.
Cycle of selfishness.
Image: Loomis Courts CHA housing projects at 14th & Loomis — the CHA sign completely painted over in solid color, buildings fully boarded up, no construction activity visible. March 11, 2026, 6:45 p.m., SubX.News®
Editor’s Note: This report is based on a live drive on March 11, 2026, covering Streeterville, Mag Mile, Upper Wacker, Lake Street, State Street, the abandoned Robert Morris University building, South Loop, East Pilsen, Loomis Courts Apartments (CHA), ABLA CHA Homes, Roosevelt westbound, the Juvenile Detention Center, live broadcast radio, police traffic, and independent scanner feeds: https://youtu.be/ToF7hMmb198
Cycle of Selfishness – abandoned Robert Morris University, 4:45 p.m. March 11, 2026
https://youtu.be/HIDBE2VBoNg
New Tents – Canalport and Dan Ryan Expressway Homeless Encampment, 6:27 p.m. March 11, 2026 https://youtube.com/shorts/88PurmGJJM8
Loomis Courts CHA housing all boarded up on 14th Street because of gentrification, 6:38 p.m. March 11, 2026 https://youtu.be/aQPgnrL-Qrw
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