McHenry County nonprofit leaders are expressing fears of increasing demand for their services, lack of housing affordability and childcare services in the area as the federal government cuts SNAP and Medicaid benefits.

The concerns were heard by Illinois Deputy Governor of Health and Human Services Grace Hou during a “listening session” Monday hosted by the Community Foundation for McHenry County.

The talk was centered around the challenges single mothers face in the county, but the conversation extended to other major challenges for people across the nation.

Dozens of representatives from local organizations participated in Monday’s sessions, including Home of the Sparrow, Crystal Lake Food Pantry, Brown Bear Daycare, Family Health Partnership Clinic, Options and Advocacy for McHenry County, Turning Point and Youth and Family Center of McHenry County.

With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year, increased work requirements will make it harder for people to qualify for a “modest amount of benefits,” Hou said.

“Unfortunately, I am not the bearer of good news,” she said. “I think the stressors that we’re seeing in the system right now are going to increase related to Medicaid.”

Nonprofit leaders said that they are already operating at capacity, and the work requirements lead to more work for the organizations.

“My ears are full, but my heart is heavy,” Hou said.

Hou said she feels “less hope than usual” because of the dwindling options.

“It’s not a ‘get-a-job’ situation,” she said. “I believe that people are good and want to help people. So maybe our narrative is lost in that ‘just go get a job’ because that is what is happening related to SNAP and that is what’s happening for Medicaid.”

The dwindling options most severely affect the most vulnerable McHenry County residents, like single-mother households and families with mixed citizenship statuses, advocates say.

“We have a lot of mixed-status families in McHenry County,” Youth and Family Center of McHenry County Executive Director Guadalupe Ortiz said. “I am terrified of the consequences that we will see in our families.”

Nonprofit representatives identified the biggest barriers as housing affordability, lack of public transportation, childcare and employment opportunities.

There are about 75 childcare centers in the county, but many aren’t operating at the maximum because of low staff, Brown Bear Daycare Executive Director Sheila Henson said. A problem not unique to only McHenry County, she said.

Long waitlists and high daycare costs leave many parents out of options to work. Home of the Sparrow Program Services Director Lindsay Kellner said an average market rate for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,790 a month in Crystal Lake. With many of their clients receiving minimum wage, rent is roughly 75% of their income, leaving little left for childcare and other expenses.

“Then we get, ‘Well, why should I work?’ and that’s unfortunate,” Henson said.

Meanwhile, the threat of freezing SNAP benefits during the federal government shutdown has caused demand to surge at local food pantries with all-time high number reported from pantries in Woodstock and Wonder Lake. Crystal Lake Food Pantry Executive Director Jason Weisenberger said the pantry hit a record of 100 families in one day last week.

“I think there’s a lot of panic this week,” he said.

President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP after a pair of judges’ rulings required it to keep the food aid program running during the government shutdown. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown.

It’s not clear how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly beneficiaries will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. The process of loading the SNAP cards, which involves steps by state and federal government agencies and vendors, can take up to two weeks in some states.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order last week to release $20 million for food banks as a way to try to mitigate the impact, Hou said.

Some advocates have said that’s insufficient.

Ongoing inflation, plus hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are furloughed during the shutdown, will continue high demands for food pantries for the foreseeable future, observers say.

“I don’t know that we are going to be able to sustain the number of people we’re serving right now unless real policy changes are made,” Hou said. “It’s just – the math doesn’t work.”