Local aid organizations declared a “state of emergency” this week for San Diego’s low-income communities after the Trump administration cut more than $80 million in funding for nonprofits to provide critical resources.
Local aid workers sounded the alarm that San Diegans are losing housing, food, health care, transportation and other necessities, as nonprofits can’t afford to provide key services. In recent months, the city’s nonprofits have scrambled to survive federal funding slashes with mass layoffs, overworking and service cuts.
As funds dry up, aid workers from the San Diego Solidarity Network, a coalition of more than 50 local nonprofits, united at Chicano Park with San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera to plead city leaders, state officials and community donors to replace the millions they’ve lost.
While the nonprofits in the coalition address a variety of needs, from environmental health to immigration, aid workers all agreed on one thing: Nonprofits are seeing more families struggle from the frontlines as they go hungry, lose health care, and can’t send their kids to school.
But now, aid organizations have far fewer tools to help.
“These cuts don’t just affect individuals; they affect all of us, or schools, or hospitals, or businesses.” said Alondra Alvarado, president of the San Diego Hunger Coalition.
“We’re being asked to serve more people with fewer resources inside a system that’s being systematically dismantled.”
Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has frozen or cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for aid organizations nationwide.
The funding cuts have left holes in the pool of aid available for the hundreds of thousands of San Diegans who rely on the city’s nonprofit support net for everyday essentials, especially as it gets more expensive to live in the city.
“This emergency is the result of an attack: an attack on working families, an attack on seniors losing access to the medication they need to survive, an attack on children losing access to the food they need to grow,” Elo-Rivera said.
“The people doing the hardest work — feeding our families, healing trauma, protecting the planet — should not have to beg for scraps.”
Low-income communities lose millions in aid
When the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Barrio Logan with $20 million last year to fund air purifiers, lead testing and environmentally friendly buses, it was a historic win for a Latino community that has for decades breathed some of the most polluted air in California.
After securing the award, Amy Castañeda and her nonprofit, the Environmental Health Coalition, threw a neighborhood celebration.
But last month, the federal government clawed back the millions. The EPA said the coalition wasn’t using the award for goals that aligned with the agency’s new “funding priorities,” according to Castañeda.
“The EPA has terminated this grant because of who it’s going to help — low-income communities who have unfairly suffered for generations from toxic, lung-damaging pollution and severe underinvestment,” she said.
Without those millions, Barrio Logan has lost a landmark investment — and the environmental change that it promised.
It’s one of many services that disadvantaged San Diegans have lost in recent months as federal funding for San Diego County’s over 13,000 nonprofits dries up. Along with environmental health, housing services and the arts have been especially impacted.
One in three of the county’s nonprofits have had to scale back or end services due to lack of funding. Many do life-saving work, like the San Diego Hunger Coalition.
“We are not here to ask for charity,” she said. “If you believe that everyone deserves the right to eat, the right to health and the right to dignity, then this is your fight too.”
Now, Alvarado said the coalition can’t afford to feed 1.5 million people and support over 60 farms because its funding was slashed.
Donors stepping up to help
Many nonprofits are used to running on tight budgets, which is why they rely on the billions in funding that the federal government has historically provided.
As nonprofits lose millions in federal dollars, they’re turning to other sources in the community to help them serve San Diegans in need.
Megan Thomas, president of the nonprofit funding organization Catalyst of San Diego and Imperial Counties, said more local philanthropists are stepping up to help fill in the gaps. That allowed her organization to open up a new fund last week to support local nonprofits with grants of up to $30,000.
Even as nonprofits turn to the community for support, aid workers, like Noun Abdelaziz of the refugee organization United Women of East Africa, said the work of pleading local and state government to step up is stretching them thin. All the while, Abdelaziz said she’s seeing the people she serve suffer.
“I find myself going to the capitol and consulting different senators to prioritize our needs and center our communities of immigrants and refugees,” Abdelaziz said.
“I ask myself always, ‘Why am I asking someone for basic necessities for a human being?'”
