Builders Have No Choice But To Meet This Demand By Bringing Down Their Prices

The government was once a steady partner for nonprofits. That’s changing

In the early days of his second term, President Donald Trump froze, cut or threatened to cut a huge range of social services programs from public safety to early childhood education to food assistance and services for refugee resettlement. Staffing cuts to federal agencies have also contributed to delays and uncertainty around future grant funds. Altogether, his policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal government has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities.

This vast and interconnected set of programs funded by taxpayers has been significantly dismantled in just months, nonprofit leaders, researchers and funders say. And even deeper, permanent cuts are still possible. That uncertainty is also taking a toll on their staff and communities, the leaders said.

In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “Instead of government largesse that’s often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration is focused on unleashing America’s economic resurgence to fuel Americans’ individual generosity.”

In 2021, $267 billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of government, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute published in February. While the data includes tax-exempt organizations like local food pantries as well as universities and nonprofit hospitals, it underestimates the total funding that nonprofits receive from the government. It includes grants, but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare. It also excludes the smallest nonprofits, which file a different, abbreviated tax form.

However, the figure does give a sense of the scale of the historic — and, until now, solid — relationship between the public sector and nonprofits over the last 50 years.

In the vast majority of the country, the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without government funding. Only in two Congressional districts — one including parts of Orange County, California, and another in the suburbs west of Atlanta — would a typical nonprofit not be in the red if they lost all of their public grant funding, the analysis found.

But in Orange County, famous for its stunning beaches, mansions and extraordinary wealth, funders, nonprofits and researchers said that finding surprised them. In part, that’s because of major economic inequalities in the county and its high cost of living.

Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers, said nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency.

“They are seeing their budgets getting slashed by 50% or 40%,” she said. “Or they’re having to look to restructure programs that they are running or how they’re serving or the number of people that they’re serving.”

Last year, the local Samueli Foundation commissioned a study of nonprofit needs in part because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from $18.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $125 million in 2025. They found local nonprofits reported problems maintaining staff, a deep lack of investment in their operations and a dearth of flexible reserve funds.

A coalition of nonprofits challenged the freeze in court in a case that is ongoing, but in the six months since, the administration has cut, paused or discontinued a vast array of programs and grants. The impacts of some of those policy changes have been felt immediately, but many will not hit the ground until current grant funding runs out, which could be in months or years depending on the programs.

https://www.boston25news.com/news/government-was-once/XO52Q5PVK5A6BFTDGJK2MKCOYA/

Fearing Trump and ICE, SF immigrants go underground

The hair salon on Mission Street is dark, the front door is locked, and the chairs are empty — but the business isn’t closed. Inside, a stylist shampoos a client at a station behind a wall of products for sale, hidden from the view of any unwelcome person who may be peering in from the street.

“We’re just keeping the door closed because of immigration,” the stylist explains in Spanish, furtively checking for anyone who may be lurking outside. Then he returns to his client, both of them hiding as they go about the suddenly dangerous business of a haircut.

To some, this might look like the calm before the storm. But for the estimated 43,000 undocumented people living in San Francisco, the businesses and community groups who serve them, and the companies that employ them, it is more like the anxious scramble before the storm — a rush to bar the doors, board up the windows, and get the hell out of town if you can.

Tania opened the Mission Street hair salon in 2016, when she herself was undocumented. Today the 55-year-old Mexican immigrant has legal work authorization, but she declines to share her last name, afraid that somehow she might end up detained by ICE.

In its early days, the shop regularly spilled over with patrons waiting half an hour for $20 fades. Just six months ago, the salon employed seven hairstylists. Now Tania’s staff is down to just herself and one other stylist.

An hour before closing, the salon would usually be bustling, but today it’s empty.

Tania sits, looking tired. She describes her daily life succinctly: “Surviving.” Business is down 70% since the ICE raids began in Los Angeles in June, she says. Her clientele is mainly undocumented people, and “people are scared to go out and spend.”

Tania guesses her clients are hiding, mostly at home. But some, she’s sure, are leaving the country. “I’ve been speaking to some of my clients from Mexico,” she says. “They’re escaping. They’re returning to Mexico.”

Tania has no plans to leave, but her survival in San Francisco feels tenuous. She’d been carrying her most important documents — driver’s license, Social Security card, and authorization to legally work in the U.S., which her son helped her attain last year — everywhere out of fear.

Last month, a client stole her purse from the shop. Now her documents are gone.

When she thinks of what she lost, her chest clenches. She has high blood pressure but doesn’t want to use her Medi-Cal coverage; she worries it will affect her efforts to attain permanent residency. “Trump says he doesn’t want us to use public services,” she explains.

If business doesn’t improve, she will close her salon when the lease expires in 2026. In the meantime, without her papers, she worries about being detained and deported. “I’ve been in the U.S. 31 years, longer than I lived in Mexico,” Tania says, crying. “My whole life is here, my kids, everything. Just imagine that, leaving all that we’ve accomplished behind.”

Tania advises her clients to have faith. She regularly prays that God will touch President Donald Trump’s heart. “The law can’t constrain him; he just does what he wants. So I think that God is the only one who can stop him.”

At a mini market on the edge of Chinatown, Kevin, 29, a babyfaced cashier and Chinese immigrant, worries about his job.

Weekends used to be bustling. Now employees regularly outnumber customers. The market’s clientele is mostly Chinese immigrants. Kevin blames their absence on the fear of immigration enforcement. “ICE problem is big problem,” he explains.

Six months ago, by mid-afternoon on a weekend, the store would have sold 12 butchered pigs. On this day, it has sold seven. Usually there would be no more lobster. Instead, there are half a tank’s worth atop the seafood counter well past 3 p.m. “Look at the apples outside,” Kevin says, pointing to the front of the store, where cardboard boxes overflow. The store is throwing away more fruit than it has in the five years since he started working here.

A year ago at this time, he would have been ringing up customers until the early evening. But on this day, the employees begin cleaning up mid-afternoon. “Every day, less business,” Kevin says with a sad grin.

Ramon and Susana’s barbecue in McLaren Park has all the trappings of a midsummer family cookout. But this one is a going-away party for a married couple self-deporting back to El Salvador.

Like many Central American migrants, Ramon traveled through Mexico to arrive at the U.S. border. In 2022, he and 13 other people crossed the Rio Grande in an inflatable raft intended for six. The group made their way to a safe house in Texas, and Ramon eventually landed in a rented room in a shared house in Westlake, in San Francisco.

When Susana arrived a year later, they moved into an apartment in the Mission. The couple left their toddler son with Ramon’s parents in El Salvador. They planned to return once they’d saved $100,000 — money they would bring back to invest in a new business in El Salvador.

For three years, Ramon has worked for a flooring company. Only one person in his crew of 10 has legal work status. Susana found a well-paying job as a nanny. When her employer asked her to move with them to Texas, promising to employ her husband too, Susana and Ramon accepted. The move was planned for the beginning of 2025. Then Trump was reelected.

“When the president won, and Texas being so close to the border, we thought, ‘No, we don’t want to risk it,’” Susana says in Spanish. She quit and began nannying for another family.

“We wanted to stay” in San Francisco, Ramon says, “where people support undocumented people.”

That changed when the Trump administration began immigration raids in California. Even the Bay didn’t feel safe anymore. When Ramon lost cell service one day while on a job in Santa Cruz, his friends and family panicked.

“They were all worried, thinking that maybe ICE had arrested me.”

Ramon and Susana planned to wait things out, hoping the immigration raids would fizzle out. “But things just got more intense,” Ramon says. “So we decided, no, let’s get out of here.”

But the couple are also happy to return to their son, who’s now 6.

“Every morning when we call him, he says, ‘You’ll be here in 15 days,’” says Susana. “The next day he says, ‘You’ll be here in 14 days.’” Ramon and Susana will return just in time for his birthday. But they’re coming back with $40,000 less than they’d planned.

“If Trump wasn’t president,” Ramon says, “we’d stay another year or two.” The extra time would allow them to reach their financial goal to improve their life in El Salvador.

“I hope we can come back,” Susana says. “Right now, I think things are just going to get worse.”

https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/23/sf-undocumented-immigrants-hiding-self-deporting/

How ICE fears are shaping the Jackson Heights community

The fear at 26 Federal Plaza extends to pockets of immigrant communities across the city, including immigrant New Yorkers who call Queens home.

NY1 met up with Nilbia Coyote, an immigrant rights advocate, to get a firsthand look at what’s changing in the multicultural neighborhood of Jackson Heights amid ICE fears, and see how it’s impacting the local economy.

“This area, for example, is completely empty at the moment, and in the morning, this is when you see the rush of people waiting for jobs,” Coyote, executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, also known as NICE, said on the corner of 69th Street and Roosevelt Avenue.

Coyote knows the neighborhood, and what she’s seeing now, she says, is a radical change. NICE is an advocacy group that’s been helping immigrants for more than 25 years.

“There’s been a lot of presence of immigration and enforcement authorities, so people are fearful. They don’t come out like they used to,” she said.

“Usually there’s a lot of foot traffic in this area, there’s music, there’s people with street vendors selling,” Coyote said. “And there’s so much less people walking, being there, less people going to the businesses, we’ve seen multiple businesses closing, shutting down, because of the lack of clients coming.”

Like Colombian restaurant, Pollos a la Brasa Marion.

“Pollos Marion is one of those businesses owned by immigrant workers that recently closed. We used to get food from them for our community members, for the participants of our programs, so it’s really sad to see them go,” Coyote said.

“There’s usually a lot of people just walking, visiting the businesses, because you have everything here,” Coyote said of the area around lunchtime.

In Lower Manhattan Monday, President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, vowed to increase the presence of ICE agents in the city.

“Sanctuary cities are now our priority. We’re going to flood the zone,” Homan said.

Coyote says the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is having a trickle-down effect on small businesses that are immigrant-owned or rely on immigrant workers to keep them afloat.

In Jackson Heights, 64% of the residents are foreign born. Coyote believes community members are not coming outside and spending like before.

Isabel Gil says her employers at a Colombian bakery on Roosevelt Avenue have reduced her hours because they’re seeing fewer customers coming in over concerns about ICE sightings in the neighborhood.

“For us, it’s taking hours from our schedule, and then people are not coming, and obviously, sales are down, and this is bad for the owners,” Gil said.

https://ny1.com/nyc/queens/politics/2025/07/22/how-ice-fears-are-shaping-the-jackson-heights-community

I got a request to do an exterior/occupancy inspection for this shack:

$982,800

2593 N Oakmont Dr, Flagstaff, AZ 86004

5beds 4baths 3,577sqft

Price history
Date Event Price
7/8/2005 Sold $489,000 $137/sqft

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2593-N-Oakmont-Dr-Flagstaff-AZ-86004/7369322_zpid/

I told them I don’t do foreclosure work in Arizona. Look at the zestimet chart. Underwater until 2016. About 500k in 2020, then rockets up to nearly a million pesos today. Obviously did multiple cash out refis along the way and stopped paying. Nothing to see here Jerry! And it’s a dump.