San Diego County’s five-member congressional delegation will consist entirely of Democrats next year after a landslide midterm election that left the Democratic Party in control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
Local experts told inewsource they hope the election results will motivate Congress to address recent federal policy changes that have left people scrambling in San Diego and elsewhere.
Among other priorities, they’re monitoring housing aid, nonprofit funding, nutrition and farm subsidies, and the future of President Donald Trump’s divisive tariffs. Here’s a brief overview.
Housing aid
The Trump administration has spent the past year trying to shift federal homelessness funds away from “Housing First” model programs like permanent housing and toward “Treatment First” programs that require participants to meet goals like getting sober before receiving housing.
That shift threatened more than $40 million a year in grants to San Diego County.
Courts blocked the government’s first attempt, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) tried again this year. HUD can now choose this year’s grantees under its new priorities while an appeal plays out, with awards due Dec. 1.
The city and county closed their section 8 waitlists — with 76,000 and 124,000 people on them, respectively — because rising housing costs outpaced stagnant federal funding. A COVID-era voucher program ran out of money years early for 650 San Diego families before a September spending bill gave them a reprieve.
Congress also passed the biggest housing bill in decades, which became law in July without Trump’s signature, though local experts said it wouldn’t bring renters immediate relief.
So what might be expected next year with a Republican president and a Democratic Congress?
Stephen Russell, CEO of the San Diego Housing Federation, wants Congress to reverse the cuts in Trump’s signature spending bill, H.R 1, to expand housing vouchers and to change HUD rules so mixed-status households can get housing benefits.
“I actually remain very optimistic that given the scale of the turnover in the Congress, that we can get veto-proof direction from Congress to do these things,” he said.
Despite his optimism, he is counting on the state housing bond voters approved — Proposition 1 — that authorizes $11.25 billion for affordable housing. Russell said he thinks the measure will usher in the construction of thousands of new affordable housing units locally — the kind of building San Diego hasn’t seen in two decades.
Russell said between the housing bond and the services that will be provided via San Diego County’s Measure B voters showed that they want California to “seize its own destiny.”
“We cannot always be relying on the federal government,” he said. “Affordable housing does not finance itself. It does not pay for itself.”
Nonprofit funding
San Diego nonprofit leaders declared a state of emergency in June 2025, six months into federal grant cancellations that pulled money from libraries, museums, environmental projects and Rady Children’s Hospital. A University of San Diego Nonprofit Institute survey found local groups laid off nearly 500 employees in the first weeks of Trump’s second term.
Laura Deitrick, the institute’s executive director, told inewsource that an upcoming, updated survey expected to be released in January shows that the strain hasn’t eased.
One in four San Diego nonprofits described their financial health as weak or very weak this fall, according to that survey by USD’s Nonprofit Institute. About a third said they had cut staff positions or hours, and just as many had cut programs or services.
Fewer nonprofit staff means “less health care appointments, fewer child care options, less capacity to help families,” Deitrick said.
The demand continues to outpace what nonprofits can provide, she said, and private donors “cannot come even close to the full cost of lost government funding.”
She added that “at a certain point in time, it becomes impossible to fully deliver on your mission.”
Her hope for the incoming Congress is that its members listen to nonprofit organizations to learn what they are going through and create a more predictable policy environment.
Casa Familiar, for example, lost a $12.7 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for clean transportation and air purifiers, and another $500,000 grant after the Trump administration cut funding for programs related to environmental justice.
Casa Familiar President and CEO Lisa Cuestas said that the lost grants caused them to restructure and layoff staff.
“Do I think that I’m going to see those dollars come back to me?” Cuestas asked. “No, because those dollars have been spent somewhere else.”
She said she doesn’t expect funding priorities to change overnight when the new Congress gets sworn in because the staff at grant-making agencies won’t change with Congress “and those seats are not elected.”
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Despite setbacks, she said Casa Familiar’s work continues.
“We didn’t stop,” she said. “We just paused.”
Nutrition and farm subsidies
Trump’s signature spending law H.R.1 cut the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as CalFresh in California, and Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal.
At the time, county officials estimated 400,000 people would face new work requirements.
Starting in October 2027, California could owe about $2 billion a year for CalFresh benefits the federal government used to cover, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Medi-Cal work requirements begin Jan. 1, days before Democrats take control of Congress.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, a national anti-hunger group, said that states can’t afford to wait for the new Congress to get sworn in.
Most states finish their budgets by June and need to know now whether they’ll have to pay for part of SNAP benefits.
“This is the reason why we need this to happen during the lame duck session, as Congress comes back,” she said. “States need to be able to plan.”
While Plata-Nino is advocating for all H.R.1 cuts to be reversed, she is hoping that Congress might more quickly implement a two-year delay for the provisions to take effect.
“Rural America and farm country was really vocal about what the policies have done and really turned and gave a strong rebuke to the administration,” she said, adding that “the new Congress is coming, but the time to act is now.”
Plata-Nino said that if Congress doesn’t delay the onset of H.R.1 cuts, it will let down “millions of Americans who will continue to go hungry and farmers who need farm relief.”
President Trump’s tariffs
When President Trump ended the so-called “de minimis” exemption in August 2025, which let goods worth under $800 enter the country duty-free, border business leaders warned it would hit Tijuana warehouses that shipped directly to U.S. shoppers and the Otay Mesa companies that serve them.
Eduardo Acosta said then that “millions of square feet in Tijuana” would have to downsize.
He’s the international business affairs chair for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and vice president of RL Jones, a customs brokerage founded in Calexico that works along the U.S. Mexico border.
That policy came months after Trump’s tariffs whipsawed import prices for San Diego businesses. Duties of 50% on steel, aluminum and copper stayed in place even for many Mexican-made goods that otherwise cross duty-free under the North American trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or the USMCA.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs in February, but the steel and aluminum tariffs that hit Mexican factories remain in effect, and so does the end of de minimis.
Now, Acosta said, it’s those duties on steel and aluminum that are creating the most pain for cross-border manufacturing.
“In my industry, people are laying people off, warehouses are downsizing,” Acosta said. “And then you’ve got to pay more gas.”
On top of that, a federal rule will require customs brokers to vet foreign companies that import goods into the U.S., starting in January. That puts the burden on brokers like Acosta.
He doesn’t expect Congress to pursue immediate relief on trade given competing priorities.
“We’re going to be in a lame duck session, but we understand the duck is going to be very upset,” he said.
Initially, all he’s banking on is a return to normal politics and good manners like “dealing with the government, knowing what you’re getting into. No knee jerk reaction to a guy from Canada pissing off the president and now tariffs on Canada.”
Eventually, he said he hopes that anger over the rising costs at gas stations and grocery stores that helped Democrats wrest control of Congress from Republicans move all lawmakers to bring down tariffs.
