As Chicago clears away its biggest tent city, a former gang leader says he won’t settle for a homeless shelter

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To ward off rats, James Rios tapes steel wool into a hole of his tent at an encampment in Chicago’s Humboldt Park last Friday. Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

As the weather turns cold, James Rios and his girlfriend are gradually moving out of a paper-thin summer tent in Humboldt Park, where they have spent the past couple months.

They’re not going far. In fact, they’re moving just 15 feet, into an orange ice-fishing tent that they hope will be warmer. After years of use, that tent has some rips that Rios, 44, is trying to seal with duct tape.

“I’m stuffing this hole with this steel sponge so that the rats — penetrating through it, when they nibble on that — they will stop because it doesn’t agree with their teeth,” said Rios, who once helped lead a street gang near the park…

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