In June 2024, 3,500 people called the Rhode Island 2-1-1 helpline, the free phone line that connects people to organizations that can help them with urgent needs like housing, meals and energy bills. In June 2025, 2-1-1 again received about 3,500 calls.
But this June, 6,169 people called the 2-1-1 helpline — the highest monthly number in years. Through August, every month of 2026 so far has seen more calls to 2-1-1 than the same months in 2024 or 2025, according to data provided by United Way.
The numbers starkly confirm the story told by service providers around the Ocean State: The demand for social services is skyrocketing as more and more people discover they can no longer afford to live in Rhode Island.
But the organizations that serve this demand are facing a fiscal crisis. Under President Donald Trump, the federal government has made deep cuts in funding for public assistance programs, leaving organizations that provide housing, food or mental health assistance scrambling — and sometimes competing with each other — for funding to meet the community’s growing needs.
“With the new administration coming in last year, we saw drastic, draconian cuts to federal funding programs that had been established for years,” said Nancy Wolanski, director of the Alliance for Nonprofit Impact at United Way of Rhode Island. The alliance is essentially a professional association for hundreds of nonprofit groups in the state.
The crisis is likely to get worse this fall as new federal rules kick in that will make it harder for people to qualify for Medicaid benefits. Around 30,000 Rhode Islanders are expected to lose federal support for their healthcare coverage.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government swooped in with billions of dollars to support relief efforts nationwide. Local nonprofits ramped up to meet soaring needs for food, housing assistance and mental health services that were believed to be a short-term crisis.
But Wolanski and other nonprofit leaders in the state have discovered the need has only continued to grow.
“Most of us tend to think of the pandemic as kind of the pinnacle of need in our communities because we're very aware of how our neighbors were struggling during that time,” she said. “That was a high point, but it has continued to increase since that high point.”
A greater need for services
Across the social services spectrum, providers say the people seeking help have much greater needs than in prior years. Michelle Wilcox, CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, the state’s biggest shelter provider, said her organization is seeing more challenging cases.
“We’re seeing more families with young children. We’re seeing more seniors, more elders,” she said. “We also have the population of people who have severe and persistent mental illness, severe substance use disorder… that population became so much more acute and extreme during the pandemic.”
But as the need for services has grown dramatically, funding to meet those needs has not kept up.
“We’re seeing a very different landscape than we did even a year ago,” said Kevin Simon, Pastor at Mathewson Street Church, which serves hundreds of unhoused people in downtown Providence. “We work closely with other service providers in the state and the resources have dried up.”
Mirelle Sayaf is the executive director of the Ocean State Center for Independent Living in Warwick, which helps seniors and people with disabilities get services that will keep them in their homes instead of moving into nursing homes or other facilities. Requests for that help have nearly tripled over the past five years — but her federal funding has remained flat.
“If I don't get an increase in funding, I can't increase my staff,” Sayaf said.
And that means she has a waiting list of people who are not getting services.
“Demand does not disappear because funding is reduced. A funding cut on paper becomes a service decision in someone's life,” Sayaf said. “We do not want to turn people away. We want the resources to serve them properly.”
But where will those resources come from?
In Woonsocket, Ben Lessing runs Community Care Alliance, which provides substance recovery programs, housing assistance, mental health services and other support to people in need across the state. He says that with the federal government retreating from these programs, Rhode Island has to fundamentally rethink how social services are funded.
“The thinking has been — and this goes back decades — is that we will operate programs and resources on the federal dime,” Lessing said, “and try not to put state funds, general funds, if you will, into these services. That's just not going to continue to be tenable.”
A state task force suggested last year that upcoming federal cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and health insurance programs could cost the state more than $100 million in fiscal year 2027 alone.
But the federal funding changes go far beyond those programs. The Trump administration is attempting to shift homelessness funding from permanent housing programs to temporary, emergency housing. That could have “significant impact on people who are housed today,” said Wilcox from Crossroads, because the federal support that helps pay community members’ rent could disappear.
The White House has also proposed new rules that would make it easier for federal agencies to cancel a grant that has already been awarded if officials decide it is “no longer in the federal government’s interest.” That is particularly meant to enable the administration to target projects that advance diversity, equity and inclusion. Providers say this would mean that, even if an organization won a federal grant, there would be no guarantee the money would arrive.
Charting a path forward
State officials are clearly aware of the looming crisis.
The Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services “has been actively engaged in understanding these pressures and coordinating with partners to assess how changes to federal requirements may affect Rhode Island’s health and human services system,” Communications Director Kerri White told Ocean State Media.
White said the office is finalizing a budget request for next year that includes “support for partners and providers experiencing increased demand, and strategies to maintain access to critical services.”
But the legislature will not be able to take up any budget proposal before Gov. Dan McKee leaves office in January, meaning it will be up to the state’s next governor to figure out how to fill the funding gap.
Private philanthropy is clearly not the solution, according to Wolanski of the United Way.
“I don’t think anything can fill the gap when you look at the amount of funding that comes from the federal government versus organized philanthropy and private philanthropy,” said Wolanski. “There’s just no one else who could pick up that kind of slack.”
Michael DiBiase, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, said part of the solution might be to provide assistance directly to individuals instead of working through nonprofits.
"The state’s policy response to those losing Medicaid has been to provide assistance to health care providers, through increased reimbursement rates or grants, rather than to provide direct assistance to the affected individuals," DiBiase said. "Similarly, the response to those losing SNAP benefits has been to provide grants to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. Consequently, there are gaps in available services for these individuals."
The cuts that social services organizations are facing also have potentially broad implications for arts organizations and other nonprofits that don’t get federal funding, because there is now more competition for local philanthropic dollars.
For instance, Mathewson Street Church recently had to repair its roof, a project that cost about $125,000. The Biden administration approved a federal grant to fund that work, but the Trump administration put new restrictions on the money — for example, requiring that transgender people would not be served, which the church would not agree to. Instead, the church was able to raise the money locally, which may mean that another local nonprofit did not get funded.
Wolanski said there are more than 1,000 nonprofits across the state that have full-time employees, and all of them are now looking at a deeply challenging financial future.
Beyond serving the needy, Wolanski said, “without the nonprofits, you don’t have the quality of life — with the performing arts centers or the land trusts where you take your dog for a walk or the Norman Bird Sanctuary… We all benefit from having these treasures and cultural opportunities.”
Editor’s note: Mathewson Street Church is a financial sponsor of Ocean State Media. Editorial decisions are made independent of financial support.
