DATE:
November 18, 2025
18
TO:
Board of Supervisors
SUBJECT
Title
PARTNERSHIP TO PROTECT SAN DIEGO: A PUBLIC-PHILANTHROPIC EFFORT TO SHIELD FOOD, HOUSING, AND HEALTH FROM FEDERAL CUTS (DISTRICTS: ALL)
Body
OVERVIEW
Washington's actions are pushing San Diego's communities to the brink. H.R. 1, signed by the Trump Administration, guts the very programs that keep people healthy, housed, and fed. This law rips hundreds of millions each year from the County of San Diego, cutting off lifelines like food assistance, Medicaid, and other essential supports families depend on.
The impacts will be severe. Nearly 400,000 San Diegans enrolled in Medicaid will face new bureaucratic hurdles just to see a doctor. Nearly 100,000 San Diegans are at risk of losing food assistance because of new regulations that will begin to take effect in the coming year. These federal policies could strip hundreds of thousands of residents of the support they rely on. Families will fall into homelessness, more patients will crowd emergency rooms, and poverty will deepen, costs that ultimately fall on local taxpayers. Without action, essential services across our region will begin to unravel, and our nonprofits will be stretched even thinner trying to fill the gap left by federal funding withdrawal.
The County estimates up to $300 million per year funding gap resulting from the H.R. 1, directly impacting the County budget and putting dozens of critical community-based programs at risk.
Now that crisis is compounding. The federal government has frozen funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps 42 million Americans, including one in eight San Diegans, put food on the table each month. The Administration's refusal to release SNAP contingency reserves, despite Court orders, means $75 million a month in food assistance is no longer flowing into San Diego stores, farmers markets, and small businesses. Families are going hungry, food banks are overwhelm...
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