Illustration by Tabitha Walters
“We’re dealing with an insane amount of mental health issues and anxiety from our residents,” says Derrick Miller, executive director of the Community Action Network. CAN’s seven community centers provide everything from after-school programs to housing support and emergency food pantries, and its clients are reeling from the Trump administration’s budget cuts.
Miller says they began “doomsday planning” right after Donald Trump’s election. The president’s executive orders have already forced them to lay off an employee, freeze part-time positions, and scrub hiring proposals of any reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Environmental programs are targeted, too. CAN was supposed to help the city implement a $10 million grant to build a geothermal system in the Bryant neighborhood, but Miller says they’ve seen “zero” dollars from the new administration.
CAN is a microcosm of the chaos created by the Trump cuts. Yet Miller says his agency is relatively “lucky,” because others depend even more on federal money. Jewish Family Services, which manages refugee resettlement, “had a bunch of layoffs” when the program’s funding was frozen, he says. (At press time JFS had not responded to requests for comment, but it’s issued an appeal for donations to continue services for the last refugees to arrive.)
“It’s only going to get worse,” Miller adds. “There’s a lot of concerns about the farm bill,” because it funds food banks. “Last Thursday at our food distribution, one of our sites had over 215 people come through,” he says. “That was a record in any single day we’ve ever had.”
Miller hears that the next target will be the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Its Section 8 program keeps many of the city’s poorest residents housed, so cuts there would magnify “the sheer amount of emotional harm that’s going on with some of these families,” he says. “Because they have no idea when it’s their turn to get disrupted, and resources pulled, and being yanked around.”
