CHICAGO (CBS) — Several homeless people who were camped out in a tent city in the Uptown neighborhood were looking for a new place to live, after city workers shut it down Monday morning.

Those who lived in the popular tent city outside the shuttered Stewart Elementary School said the city gave them just a few days’ notice to pack up and leave before construction begins on a new development at the site.

While some were told a new community center would be built, it appeared condos and stores would soon take over the corner of Wilson and Kenmore avenues.

Bobby Williams said he and the others who set up tents there were put in an unfair position by the city.

“They just dropped this in our laps a couple of days ago: you’ve got to go,” Williams said. “We got a deadline to get out of here, or we’re going to get locked up just for trying to live.”

That deadline came at 10 a.m. Monday, as city workers fenced off the parking lot of old Stewart Elementary, forcing dozens of people to pack up their tents and leave.

Dolores Parker said she and the others there have been left with very few places to go.

“The shelters are full. All we want is to be left alone in peace until we can get affordable housing, which is very scarce in the city,” she said.

Parker said the people who lived in the tent city deserved better than this.

“There’s nowhere for us to go, and yet there’ pushing us around like we don’t even matter, like we’re not human, like we don’t deserve a place to live, and it’s just not fair,” she said.