Editor’s note: Casey Tobias is a community organizer, founder and director of HOPE, working tirelessly to help her community while living with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in Three Rivers, Michigan.This commentary piece was published on Michigan Advance on March 12, 2026, and is cross-posted with permission.

Even the most dedicated volunteers can’t fill the enormous hole left by federal cuts to the safety net.

It all started with Walter.

A few years ago, my elderly dad asked if he could bring his new friend, Walter, to my house for Thanksgiving. Of course. Everyone is welcome at my table. My parents raised me to help others — one of my earliest memories is handing out care packages to soldiers returning from Vietnam.

Walter was very thin, with the saddest blue eyes I had ever seen. He shuffled, hunched over when he walked. Walter had lost his home to a preventable foreclosure after the death of his wife and was living in the woods behind a local grocery store. I searched for help for Walter. It was more difficult than I expected, but in the end, a grandson took him in.

The experience opened my eyes to the plight of the many unhoused people living in our small community. I started noticing signs of struggle every day.

I was working at our local Sunoco gas station. Daily, I saw folks coming in, trying to decide between gas, milk, and eggs. I’ve seen too many moms return a tiny treat to the shelves as their children cried because the change they laid out on the counter wasn’t even enough for the basics they were trying to buy.

I live in Three Rivers, Michigan, where our poverty rate is 15 percent and rising — and our median income is just $48,000 annually and falling.

Nationally, homelessness in rural areas like ours is increasing. In 2024, the most recent  “Point-In-Time” count available, nearly 130,000 rural Americans were unsheltered — and nearly 275,000 overall. If you add in those in shelters or transitional housing, the number of unhoused people rises to over 770,000 nationwide.

Upon seeing the great need in my community, I went to our City Manager asking for an available town property to rent for our homeless population. When he refused, I launched HOPE (Homeless Outreach Practiced Everyday).

I started cooking huge meals and feeding people in the Sunoco parking lot out of the back of my truck. In winter, I had the truck full of hats, gloves, and socks. Neighbors saw what I was doing and contributed in droves. A local knitting club took up the cause, and a church gave us meals from its soup kitchen. The Elks Club donated funds.

I turned my garage into a “free store,” where people can take what they need. We hold health clinics, do laundry, and cut hair. We help with back-to-school items and children in foster care. We serve pets. We fight the local and state water commissions for clean water in a state plagued by poisonous water.

And we work nonstop to help our neighbors when disasters strike, like the recent tornado that devastated our region.

Community miracles like those tirelessly performed by HOPE make up the beauty of our nation. Just ask Walter. But we should be filling in the cracks, not the chasms.

Our work is harder because the government systems that are supposed to prevent homelessness, hunger, and economic precarity simply aren’t getting the investments they need. Under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed by a party-line vote in 2025, the Trump administration has slashed Medicaid, SNAP, and other antipoverty programs to fund tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. It’s effectively transferring wealth from us to the rich.

Even the most dedicated volunteers can’t fill the enormous hole left by government neglect of communities and families. For example, SNAP feeds nine people for every one person food pantries can feed. And the federal government is far better situated to scale up rehousing efforts than community non-profits.

We need a government that works for all of us — no matter what we look like, what our zip code is, or what income we are able to earn. I hope you’ll join me — not just in helping your own community, but in demanding that lawmakers put our tax dollars where they belong: to help our neighbors in need rather than in the velvet pockets of the already rich.