‘This is the stuff that keeps me up at night’

LOWELL — While the country waits for a final say on the validity of President Donald Trump’s attempted federal funding freeze, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan held a roundtable discussion Tuesday with local and nonprofit leaders to discuss the impact of the potential freeze on local food assistance programs.

Trahan was joined by officials from agencies like Community Teamwork and the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell, who all expressed concerns over what a loss in federal funding would do to their organizations and the food assistance they offer.

“Our community health centers were locked out of their federal portal … so they were forced to figure out how to make payroll. Our public school officials were left to wonder what that meant for paying out teachers,” said Trahan. “Community action agencies were trying to figure out how they were going to access funds for home heating assistance or rental assistance.”

Despite the judge’s order pausing Trump’s freeze, Trahan said funding for these programs is still vulnerable, with $230 billion cut from federal food assistance programs in the House Republican version of the budget.

“All of that just to pay for an enormous tax bill that will benefit the most wealthy in this country, people like billionaire donors, and Elon Musk,” said Trahan.

Merrimack Valley Food Bank Communications Director Kelly Proulx said more than one-third of the food distributed by the food bank last year was purchased with federal funds.

“Having that go away would completely cripple what we are trying to accomplish, for people who depend on us for a daily meal. We just want to make sure nobody is going to go hungry,” said Proulx. “There is also the potential for cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which means more people will be needing our services, and now we have less food to provide and more people who need it. We are all very concerned about what happens next.”

MVFB Program Director Roberta Emerson warned that things like their summer lunch program would not be possible without federal funding.

“We get roughly $58,000 reimbursed for that summer feeding program, for roughly 7,500 kids in the summertime,” said Emerson. “As a whole, we are serving 75,000 individuals a month.”

Among those at the roundtable was Chelmsford Housing Authority Executive Director David Hedison, who said he was concerned over whether funding would be available to fulfill 50 Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers to help local veterans afford housing.

“This is the stuff that keeps me up at night. I look at our seniors that come here for services on a daily basis, the staff that are serving these seniors are at risk,” said Hedison.

With things like HOME funds also in jeopardy, Hedison said all of the CHA’s projects are in jeopardy.

“It scares the heck out of me that for once in my career, we are going to be seeing some real devastation,” said Hedison.

Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell Executive Director Joseph Hungler spoke to how keeping kids well fed is necessary for their development, and his club receives federal funding to help do just that for 750 8- to 18- year-olds each year.

“More than a quarter of our budget is government funding, and that is at risk. Coming off a major capital campaign we are trying to finish up… It is going to be hard to replace that quarter of our budget otherwise,” said Hungler. “Do we stop serving x-number of kids? Do we not feed kids?”

Hungler said when the club began providing meals to its members, teachers noticed their school work and behavior both improving in the classroom.

“We are looking at different ways to solve things if this money goes away, but there is no easy answer when it is more than a quarter of your budget,” said Hungler. “You would think the federal government would like the idea of kids getting into a career where they are not going to be in poverty, which means they don’t need to access additional services and they are paying more taxes.”

Also represented at the discussion were local school officials, like Chelmsford Public Schools Superintendent Jay Lang and Lowell Public Schools Superintendent Liam Skinner, who echoed Hungler somewhat by saying “poverty is negatively correlated with school achievement.”

“Food insecurity and housing insecurity causes stress on families and stress on our students,” said Skinner. “Our students are coming to school with that, so they are less able to concentrate, they are less able to pay attention.”

Lowell’s schools can range between 60% to 90% of students being economically disadvantaged.

“So it is a crying shame we are having this conversation, in part because … we want to see the end of generational poverty. We know how. We know to make up the difference for students in our schools who are behind and economically disadvantaged,” said Skinner. “We put on additional programming in the summertime, we hire tutors, another one of the categories that would be in jeopardy if we lose federal funding.”

Officials from Middlesex Community College expressed concern over the future of free community college in Massachusetts, and MCC President Phil Sisson noted the college received a warning from the U.S. Department of Education about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“We are constantly in a battle, there is uncertainty of where we should be going. Do we continue to fight for the core mission of what we do and the people we serve? Or do we have to step away from that and scrub our website and deal with all the issues that come with this unclear definition of DEI?” said Sisson. “It is a real wakeup call to all of us.”

Speaking to reporters before the discussion, Trahan said the impacts were seen immediately when the funding freeze was first announced, before the judge stepped in.

“It was immediate, we were getting thousands of phone calls from people with uncertainty of whether they could deliver food … In our community health centers we saw they couldn’t access Medicaid portals,” said Trahan.

Part of resisting these cuts, Trahan said, is by having discussions like this one, where organizations can lay out the tangible impacts of losing federal funding.