Dear Friend of JOURNEYS,
I’m reaching out to you now because we’re facing a crisis. A social and economic emergency with very real, very human consequences. The recently passed federal government budget reconciliation—while it may carry a provocative name—will inflict quiet devastation on communities like ours.
The recent changes to our funding and support passed by the federal government is going to break things. Big things. Systems, budgets, families. It’s going to push people off the edge.
Here’s what’s coming:
Benefits like healthcare, food, housing support are being cancelled for millions of people. The very people JOURNEYS serves—families, senior citizens, veterans, kids—are barely hanging on and many are going to fall harder and stay down longer than ever before.
More people are going to lose their homes. Rent’s going up. Wages aren’t. The safety nets and resources that help people get back on their feet have disappeared with the swipe of a pen.
Congress estimated that 17 million people will lose their healthcare coverage with this new legislation. That’s more people than residents in the entire state of Illinois! Even more frightening is the estimate that 20% of children, through no fault of their own, will lose medical coverage. Over 22.3 million families are expected to lose some or all of their food assistance. This financial, health, and emotional duress placed on our neighbors is unconscionable.
When families go under, communities follow. When a working mother loses access to childcare and housing support, she doesn’t just lose her apartment—she loses her job, her stability, and her kids’ shot at staying in school. When hospitals are overrun with the consequences of a broken system, they pass the cost on to the rest of us—in premiums, in taxes, in overwhelmed ERs.
JOURNEYS—along with every other nonprofit and social service provider in the area—is being asked to do more with less. Which is fine if we lived in a fantasy. But we don’t.
The budget cuts this bill triggers will eliminate the resources JOURNEYS uses to get people off the streets and into housing. These policies slash funding for mental health, for job training, for case management, for housing vouchers. And worse—these aren’t just cuts to our agency. These are across-the-board amputations. Food pantries, clinics, shelters, crisis centers—every service that our community has to help people in need—are being gutted.
What happens when a system is overwhelmed and underfunded? It slows down. It backs up. It breaks. And the people waiting for help—mothers with children sleeping in cars, veterans trying to navigate a system that already failed them once—they wait longer, fall deeper into debt and depression. In too many of these cases, these people won’t recover at all.
We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1980s the government shut down mental health facilities, redefined addiction as a personal failing instead of a medical condition, and sent hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people into the streets without a plan. The result? A homelessness crisis that we’re still paying for and trying to recover from.
This new government plan? Same mindset. Same blind spots. Same mistakes.
This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a moral one. It’s a practical one. It’s about who we choose to be in the face of a preventable disaster. Make no mistake, you and I will share the burden of paying for this neglectful policy.
But even in this moment of deep concern, I want to say something very clearly: JOURNEYS is not going anywhere.
So here’s what we’re going to do:
We’re going to show up. We’re going to hold the line. We’re going to keep helping every person, every family, every veteran, every teen, every senior that walks through our doors. That’s not just our job, it’s our calling and we don’t walk away from it. No one in our community should be left behind.
But we need your help.
Many of us feel overwhelmed, distracted, or even pushed over the precipice of apathy. I know I’m there with you right now, and it feels awful. But we can’t numb ourselves now, not when the stakes are this high.
If you’ve ever asked yourself what you can do in the face of all this—this is the part where you get to answer.
Volunteer. Donate. Make noise. Show up.
Help us fill the gaps left by our leaders who’ve chosen to help themselves instead of helping the people who need it most.
The only way we make it through this is together.
I’m reaching out to you now because we’re facing a crisis. A social and economic emergency with very real, very human consequences. The recently passed federal government budget reconciliation—while it may carry a provocative name—will inflict quiet devastation on communities like ours.
The recent changes to our funding and support passed by the federal government is going to break things. Big things. Systems, budgets, families. It’s going to push people off the edge.
Here’s what’s coming:
Benefits like healthcare, food, housing support are being cancelled for millions of people. The very people JOURNEYS serves—families, senior citizens, veterans, kids—are barely hanging on and many are going to fall harder and stay down longer than ever before.
More people are going to lose their homes. Rent’s going up. Wages aren’t. The safety nets and resources that help people get back on their feet have disappeared with the swipe of a pen.
Congress estimated that 17 million people will lose their healthcare coverage with this new legislation. That’s more people than residents in the entire state of Illinois! Even more frightening is the estimate that 20% of children, through no fault of their own, will lose medical coverage. Over 22.3 million families are expected to lose some or all of their food assistance. This financial, health, and emotional duress placed on our neighbors is unconscionable.
When families go under, communities follow. When a working mother loses access to childcare and housing support, she doesn’t just lose her apartment—she loses her job, her stability, and her kids’ shot at staying in school. When hospitals are overrun with the consequences of a broken system, they pass the cost on to the rest of us—in premiums, in taxes, in overwhelmed ERs.
JOURNEYS—along with every other nonprofit and social service provider in the area—is being asked to do more with less. Which is fine if we lived in a fantasy. But we don’t.
The budget cuts this bill triggers will eliminate the resources JOURNEYS uses to get people off the streets and into housing. These policies slash funding for mental health, for job training, for case management, for housing vouchers. And worse—these aren’t just cuts to our agency. These are across-the-board amputations. Food pantries, clinics, shelters, crisis centers—every service that our community has to help people in need—are being gutted.
What happens when a system is overwhelmed and underfunded? It slows down. It backs up. It breaks. And the people waiting for help—mothers with children sleeping in cars, veterans trying to navigate a system that already failed them once—they wait longer, fall deeper into debt and depression. In too many of these cases, these people won’t recover at all.
We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1980s the government shut down mental health facilities, redefined addiction as a personal failing instead of a medical condition, and sent hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people into the streets without a plan. The result? A homelessness crisis that we’re still paying for and trying to recover from.
This new government plan? Same mindset. Same blind spots. Same mistakes.
This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a moral one. It’s a practical one. It’s about who we choose to be in the face of a preventable disaster. Make no mistake, you and I will share the burden of paying for this neglectful policy.
But even in this moment of deep concern, I want to say something very clearly: JOURNEYS is not going anywhere.
So here’s what we’re going to do:
We’re going to show up. We’re going to hold the line. We’re going to keep helping every person, every family, every veteran, every teen, every senior that walks through our doors. That’s not just our job, it’s our calling and we don’t walk away from it. No one in our community should be left behind.
But we need your help.
Many of us feel overwhelmed, distracted, or even pushed over the precipice of apathy. I know I’m there with you right now, and it feels awful. But we can’t numb ourselves now, not when the stakes are this high.
If you’ve ever asked yourself what you can do in the face of all this—this is the part where you get to answer.
Volunteer. Donate. Make noise. Show up.
Help us fill the gaps left by our leaders who’ve chosen to help themselves instead of helping the people who need it most.
The only way we make it through this is together.
