East County News Service
March 2, 2025 (San Diego) – Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer held a public briefing this week to inform the community on how the Trump Administration is disrupting essential local services in San Diego County. This includes active federal funding freezes, administrative delays, and policy changes that are “making it harder for us to protect public health, provide housing assistance, and respond to emergencies,” Lawson-Remer warns.
Problems she highlighted include, in her words:
FEMA is refusing to release disaster relief funds—even after a federal court told them they had to. That includes funding for the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which forced the closure of the Migrant Shelter run by Jewish Family Service (JFS)—leaving more people without a safe place to go and adding strain to our homelessness services.
The CDC has stopped regularly communicating with us about critical public health data. They haven't released the results of a federal study on chemical exposures in the TJ River Valley (ACE survey), leaving us without key information we need to protect public health. If there’s a toxic exposure risk, we don’t even have the data to act.
HUD has frozen grants for Public Housing Agencies and removed essential resources that local housing programs rely on. That means delays in rental assistance and real risks for affordable housing projects that were already in progress.
“This isn’t just frustrating—it’s dangerous,” Lawson-Remer states. “The Trump Administration is blocking federal funding that San Diegans already paid for, and instead of those dollars coming back to our community, Washington is playing games with the services people rely on.”