The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) is deeply alarmed by the Trump administration’s decision to cancel up to $2 billion in federal grants that support addiction treatment, mental health services, and community outreach. These cuts to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will cause serious harm to disabled people, including people with mental health disabilities and substance use disorders, many of whom are also unhoused or living in poverty.
These grants pay for services that save lives. The funding supports harm reduction, counseling, peer support, crisis services, and programs that help people stay housed, stay employed, and stay connected to their communities. Cutting off these grants suddenly, with no warning or plan to replace them, will leave many people without the support they need to survive.
People with disabilities have the right to receive services in their communities, not in jails, hospitals, or institutions. When community services are cut, people are pushed into emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, and the criminal legal system — places that are expensive, traumatic, and not designed to help people recover or live independently.
These cuts are part of a larger pattern of treating the people who experience homelessness, addiction, and disability as problems to punish and segregate. Instead of investing in housing and health care, government policies are increasingly focused on policing, incarceration, and forced institutionalization.
DREDF is also deeply concerned by the message this decision sends: that some people’s lives are not worth investing in. Disabled people have long been harmed by policies that treat us as disposable or less deserving of care. That kind of thinking has no place in a society that claims to value equality and human rights.
DREDF calls on Congress and federal agencies to immediately restore this funding and to protect access to community-based, voluntary, and culturally responsive services. We urge leaders at every level to choose care over punishment and to invest in housing, health care, and disability services that allow people to live with dignity in their communities.
Disability rights are human rights. Cutting off life-saving services puts lives at risk, and we will continue to speak out against policies that abandon disabled people when they need support the most.
Take Action
Congress needs to step up to restore these cuts. Here are some additional resources we can all use to document the impact and put pressure on Congress to act:
- Grantees can use this resource by Grant Witness to share information about grant cancellations.
- Use this alert from The National Council that people can use to reach out to their members of Congress, urging them to ACT NOW to stop these cuts. It is critically important to contact all members of Congress, not just those on relevant committees.
