Essay: My eviction story and the new bill that imperils housing for those most at risk of losing it

By Sarah Grace Kubasek

When my family was evicted in 2023, I believed we had failed. We were living out of our car, relying on food stamps and waiting on section 8, barely getting by. At the time, I thought poverty was a personal shortcoming, a reflection of our decisions and a symbol of our immorality. But the more I’ve watched Washington’s priorities unfold, especially this year’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” the clearer it’s become. Poverty isn’t personal. It’s policy.

And this latest budget bill doesn’t just prove that; it cements it.

The bill, passed by House Republicans and championed as a return to fiscal responsibility, proposes nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and $285 billion in SNAP reductions over the next decade. Those numbers aren’t abstract, they translate into meals lost, prescriptions skipped and housing put at risk.

And it’s not an even playing field. More than half of all Medicaid and CHIP enrollees are people of color, and 61% of the children in these programs are Black, Hispanic or from other non-white backgrounds. These cuts don’t just reduce spending; they shrink the futures of the families most in need of support.

When the government guts healthcare and food programs, it doesn’t hurt everyone equally. It hits families already hanging on by a thread. Families like mine.

We know what happens when supports are stripped away. Kids go hungry. Parents miss work because they can’t afford a doctor. Housing becomes unstable. We’ve already seen the opposite during the pandemic, when the expanded Child Tax Credit briefly lifted millions of children out of poverty, especially in Black and Latino households. That progress is now undone, and this bill ensures it won’t return.

And it gets worse. The bill adds more work requirements to access aid, punishing parents in unstable jobs, gig workers and caregivers, especially single mothers of color. It makes it harder to qualify and easier to be disqualified. It’s bureaucracy disguised as fairness and cruelty disguised as policy.

The bill also claims to address housing, but not for the people most at risk of losing it. Instead, it boosts tax breaks like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and SALT deductions, which primarily benefit wealthier homeowners and developers. Meanwhile, renters, especially Black and Brown renters, get nothing.

Worse, the bill blocks local governments from regulating rent-setting algorithms for ten years. That gives corporate landlords more freedom to raise prices and further push vulnerable families out of stable housing. I’ve lived the fear of eviction. These provisions don’t fix that fear—they lock it in.

While low-income families are told to tighten their belts, the same bill delivers massive tax cuts to the wealthy. It’s not about balancing the budget, it’s about prioritizing the powerful. This bill isn’t closing loopholes. It’s creating new ones for billionaires while closing the door on everyone else.

This is not what equity looks like. It’s not what opportunity looks like. And it’s certainly not the American Dream.

This bill doesn’t just reduce access; it increases shame. And it sends a clear message: some lives are worth investing in, and others are not.

Brown families like mine don’t need tougher standards. We need fair ones. We need policies that protect our futures. Not threaten them. The “Big Beautiful Bill” may look like politics as usual in Washington, but to families like mine, it’s a dangerous step backward, and a betrayal of everything the American Dream is supposed to stand for.

We can and must do better.

Sarah Grace Kubasek is a 20-year-old junior at UC Davis studying political science.