Ever since John F. Kennedy pointed it out, many have said said that the Chinese characters for Crisis and Opportunity (危機; wéijī) are the same. They are actually different. Wēi means danger; jī means change. That is, things will change under threat. That said, it seems pretty clear that someone’s crisis provides an opportunity for someone else to help or exploit them.
One of NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s first crisis of many to come turns out to be food insecurity, affecting not only the millions of New Yorkers who receive SNAP benefits, but those who don’t and have trouble putting food on the table. That is, if they have a table to put it on, which hundreds of thousands of NYC’s homeless do not.
Speaking of whom, Trump just changed the rules for federal housing assistance. The most successful programs to combat homelessness have proven to be “housing first,” meaning there’s no need to qualify you are fit to have your own place — mental health and substance abuse issues are better addressed once you’re secure. Trump has turned the funding on it’s ear, so only 30% of it can be used to supply permanent housing; the rest goes to “transitional housing,” such as shelters, group homes, and detox wards.
One sign of what may to come to pass is a campus for the homeless planned for Salt Lake City. Such enclosures may be what Trump anticipated by signing an order in July to make it easier to get people off the streets whether they want it or not. Now the state of Utah is planning to do just that. According to the NY Times on 10/29/25:
To glimpse the future of homelessness policy in the age of President Trump, consider 16 acres of scrubby pasture on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where the state plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people in what supporters call a services campus and critics deem a detention camp.
State planners say the site, announced last month after a secretive search, will treat addiction and mental illness and provide a humane alternative to the streets, where afflictions often go untreated and people die at alarming rates.
They also vow stern measures to move homeless people to the remote site and force many of them to undergo treatment, reflecting a nationwide push by some conservatives for a new approach to homelessness, one embraced and promoted by Mr. Trump.
Will residents of this campus (see above rendering) be free to come and go? That’s problematic; the site is 10 miles away from downtown and there’s no public transportation. Furthermore, Utah’s State homeless Services website says “The campus will be surrounded by a security fence to ensure guest and staff safety, while still maintaining a welcoming and respectful appearance.” Roach Motels come to mind, but we’ll see.
How convenient, then, is the shift away from housing vouchers; losing the subsidies may force recipients back onto the streets, from where they can be forcibly removed to “transitional housing” and receive “therapy,” some of which may be provided on site by prison industries.
Getting back to food aid, New York Governor Kathy Hochul pledged to keep SNAP benefits flowing as long as possible. To spite her and Gavin Newsom’s faces, Trump prohibited states from paying for SNAP benefits during the shutdown. To spite Zohran Mamdani’s face, he also threatened to throttle USDOT funds for the new Hudson Tunnel ($4.6B for the $16B dig). So Mamdani’s cup of woes will overflow with one budget shortfall after another, enough to drive one mad.
There need to be better ways to keep people fed that aren’t so vulnerable to ideological intransigence and political opportunism. And once it became clear several weeks ago that SNAP could pause indefinitely, a lot of people seem to have taken upon themselves to cushion the blow. I have seen individuals, churches, civic groups, and online coalitions stepping up to provide food aid. Donations are pouring into food pantries, crowdfunding sites are popping up, and community suppers are being publicized. Someone I know offered on Facebook to provide followers breakfast for five people at a local restaurant.
All this spirited activity may seem moot, as Trump said that SNAP will continue to be funded for the 41M Americans who depend on their SNAP EBT cards. That is one out of every three households (132M, according to the St. Louis Fed’s figures), a sickening statistic for the richest country on earth. But given the proclivity of Trump’s handlers to cut back federal entitlements for the non-rich, it’s a pretty good bet that SNAP will not emerge unscathed. Nor will its recipients, as USDA has told states to surrender lists of them, no doubt to be accessed by ICE. Thankfully, on September 19th,
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in California issued her ruling against the the USDA after several states raised concerns that the proposed data sharing could expose applicants’ sensitive information, such as income, family data and potentially immigration status to support mass deportations. The court found that USDA had not put adequate safeguards in place to protect the information from unauthorized access or harmful use. — Statescoop, 9/22/25
So it makes sense to plan for the worst-case or at least the more likely scenarios for cutting government funding, and that’s happening spontaneously. While groups dedicated to addressing food insecurity have existed in most localities for a while, current events have energized them to enhance and coordinate their good works more than ever before. The proper response to impending chaos is to organize.
As hunger and homelessness grow, we need to focus on and organize around wealth inequality. While the Federal Government retrenches from the war on poverty to mount war on Venezuela, new billionaires are being hatched at an accelerating pace. According to Forbes’ annual wealth survey, this year 288 new ones (joining Taylor Swift are celebrities Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Seinfeld, and Bruce Springsteen) joined their ranks (8.7% growth, year over year), for a total of 3028. The wealthiest one, Elon Musk, just got a pay raise that elevated him to trillionaire status. Some of what he’s getting may be your money, by the way.
You won’t find accounts of wealth inequality on network news or local media, which are increasingly cartels controlled by billionaires. But the sad fact is that the bottom 50% of Americans have just 2.5% of private wealth ($13,699 per capita), and wealth of those below the 90th percentiles hasn’t grown appreciably in 60 years. By 2021, the top 1% controlled 50 times as much wealth of the bottom 90% on a per capita basis.
A lot of this wealth is stashed overseas, held in precious metals, or in shell companies. In any case, income, not wealth, is taxed in the US. And despite progressive taxation, the effective tax rate of most billionaires is less than yours or mine (and for many, as well as their corporations, is zero), thanks to exemptions, credits, and loopholes in the federal tax code.
The best we can do about that is to lobby for fairer treatment of the less fortunate by governments and to use our buying power to deny revenues to billionaire owners and investors in major corporations. Put your retirement savings in funds that don’t include tech giants and war profiteers. Think twice before checking out at Amazon, and buy what as much of what you need from local businesses if you can. Join a co-op. Recycle unused items, say with freecycle.org. And if you don’t really need something, consider not buying it.
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