The many chairs lined up before Thanksgiving at a Sonoma County food distribution site portended more than the holiday’s typical dinner-table need to United Way of the Wine Country President and CEO Lisa Carreño. The plethora of seats signaled a slippery slope into poverty that many North Bay residents may be about to embark upon since the July passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to North Bay insiders on the front lines of food assistance, housing support and health care. When asked if she predicts significant numbers of people will be launched into poverty as H.R. 1 fully takes effect, Carreño is emphatic. “It absolutely will,” Carreño says. “Our concern is a ripple effect across this country from self-inflicted wounds that will push our world into a global depression.” She says she sees “very little resolve” among U.S. leadership to address policy inequities that further widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor, rendering “less than 1% [of the population] enriched—and we’re subsidizing their wealth.” The congressional legal behemoth dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act marks the largest downscaling of health- and-human-services funds in U.S. history, amounting to $1 trillion, while featuring $4.5 trillion in tax breaks, reported the Legal Defense Fund, a U.S. law advocacy organization. The bill is punctuated by cuts for 42 million participants on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). It also makes immediate reforms for over 71 million enrollees on Medicaid, as well as the U.S. health care exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act. According to nonprofit leaders specializing in food assistance, housing support and health care services across the North Bay, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of Sonoma County residents will lose or face barriers to essential benefits like Medi-Cal [California’s version of Medicaid], CalFresh, housing assistance and tax credits. And work requirements and immigrant exclusions “will push families deeper into poverty,” Carreño says. Those exclusions also threaten the livelihood of farmworkers, especially the half of the 83,000 immigrants in Sonoma County who are undocumented. Work requirements, meanwhile, will take parents administering childcare out of the home, forcing them to pay out of pocket or do without childcare altogether. Of the over 135,000 Sonoma County residents on Medi-Cal, more than 30,000 individuals will be required to work to receive benefits by the end of 2026. Times were already
The data shows the trend worsening. During the Oct. 14, 2025 Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting, a presentation highlighting the public impacts of H.R. 1 showed funding impacts worsening in fiscal year 2026-27. Demand for assistance through the United Way’s 211 Sonoma resource hub has nearly doubled to 9,421 new site visitors checking out programs and services from July to November. “The nonprofit- and community-safety net is already stretched thin and will face surging demand for food, housing, mental health and legal services as federal benefits are withdrawn,” Carreño says. Current data reveals a tripling of requests for housing and food assistance. Carreño says “it’s reasonable to expect” at least a doubling of need over the next 12 months. The nonprofits providing these basic needs are hungry for solutions. At the top of the list is Redwood Empire Food Bank, run by CEO Allison Goodwin. “We’ve seen a direct impact with SNAP reductions. It’s hard to know what will happen with H.R. 1, but we are seeing more volume in numbers of new families signing up,” she says. Goodwin cites a 300% increase to REFB, the North Bay’s primary food assistance program, with servicing for 500 new families per month for “the first time.” Adding to the challenges of increased need led by higher grocery prices, inflation and tariffs are the cuts faced earlier this year in which nine truckloads of food were held back from U.S. Department of Agriculture programs. She equates the ebb and flow of answering the call to those in need as “a whack-a-mole” scenario. For instance, simple seasonal changes exacerbate financial strains, as households endure the budget crunch of elevated heating bills. “Are we concerned? That’s an understatement,” says Jared Call, director of advocacy and public policy for the California Association of Food Banks. To illustrate the widespread need, California food banks served 4.5 million people a month during the pandemic. Now, it’s over 6 million. “The need is felt across the state,” Call says, leading to “tremendous fear and stress.” Health care may bear the brunt of that anxiety as a double-whammy—as cuts to medical programs will lead to
the lower income people in poor health not seeking the care they need until their conditions worsen enough to send them to the emergency room. “As the funding dries up, less people come in for screenings. More
tough. According to the May release of the United Ways of California’s annual Real Cost Measure gauging the population’s ability to cover the cost of living, 1 in 3 Sonoma County families (45,000 households) was found to be struggling to meet basic needs.
episodic care means people wait because they’re afraid of the
(medical) bill,” says Santa Rosa Community Health CEO Gaby Bernal Leroi.
“Then they go to the hospital and ERs get
ñ o, president and CEO of the
Allison Goodwin, CEO of the Redwood Empire Food Bank.
Lisa Carre
United Way of the Wine Country.
24 NorthBaybiz
January 2026
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