By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.
The Truth Contributor
Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings. – Nelson Mandela
Federal policy changes this month will strip food assistance from thousands of county families and threaten hundreds of elderly and disabled residents with the loss of long-term housing. Local officials are scrambling. Many affected residents are already panicking. Justifiably so!
This is a fact and not a warning. The One Big Beautiful Bill became law last July. Its new food assistance rules are not pending—they are now active. In Lucas County, about one in six residents relies on SNAP to eat. Officials aware of the situation are struggling to prevent collapse. They see it coming but cannot stop it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill’s new rules require working-age adults (now up to age 64, raised from 55) to document 20 hours a week of employment, training, or approved volunteer activity. That alone would be a steep bar for many families. But the law goes further. It stripped the exemption for veterans. It also stripped the exemption for people experiencing homelessness. And it gutted the childcare exemption — parents are now only protected if their child is 13 or younger. A mother supervising or attempting to manage the life of a 14-year-old — the school schedule, the appointments, the ten thousand things that parenting a teenager actually requires — no longer qualifies for any relief from the work clock. The One Big Beautiful Bill decided that raising a teenager is not a legitimate demand on a parent’s time.
Even more cruelly, if a person misses the threshold for three months in a row — March, April, May — they lose eligibility until 2029. Three months of noncompliance, three years locked out. Moreover, the county does not yet have a complete list of who will fall into it, because the state is responsible for notification — by mail and robocall — to people who may not have stable addresses, who may not understand the letter, or who may miss the window entirely.
The food crisis is beginning to draw attention, while the housing situation has received less focus despite its seriousness.
About 500 elderly and disabled county residents could lose long-term housing under a federal rule change that makes enrollment in substance abuse treatment a condition of keeping a roof. The approach being discarded — house people first, sort out the rest from stability — is the one that has actually cut chronic homelessness. The one replacing it is the one that didn’t. The Big and Beautiful rejects this, requiring residents to earn housing through compliance.
Anyone who has worked with people in recovery—or loved someone through it—knows what that model produces. You do not get people into treatment by taking away their front door. You get them on the street, where the chances of recovery drop through the floor. A board meeting to address potential displacement has finally been called. It is scheduled for this week. The residents who may lose their homes do not have the luxury of a slow timeline.
The panic spreading through this county is not irrational. County officials are scrambling because the situation demands it. Government offices can scramble. But they cannot knock on your neighbor’s door. They cannot sit at a kitchen table and walk someone through a form. Those things require people — the kind who already know each other and already have a reason to show up.
This month, Lucas County needs a lot of those people to do exactly that — especially in a nation that prints “In God We Trust” on the money it is now withholding from the poor. The God who blessed the poor, healed the sick without a co-pay, welcomed the foreigner, ate with the excluded but, most of all, reserved His most blistering condemnation — not for sinners but for religious and political elite who burdened the poor while blessing the powerful.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org