Amy Cronin DiCaprio’s son, now 14, was born with congenital heart and lung defects. He underwent major surgeries in infancy, including one to remove a lobe of his lung, and open heart surgery just two weeks later. She said he suffers from significant behavioral health challenges as well and is on several prescription medications.

For health insurance, Cronin DiCaprio, a mother of two, relies on MassHealth — Massachusetts’ program that administers both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. For her and her family, those programs are the only way they can receive health care.

“If we lost MassHealth, we just wouldn’t be able to do that anymore,” she recently told The Shoestring, warily twisting a ring on her finger. “We would just… there’s no way we could afford it.”

Those are very real fears for Cronin DiCaprio and millions of others across the country.

President Donald Trump and Republicans are currently preparing a budget that seems certain to contain significant cuts to Medicaid and CHIP, which some 2 million Massachusetts residents rely on through MassHealth. Nationwide, another 72 million Americans receive coverage through Medicaid.

These programs provide critical health services for individuals and families like Cronin DiCaprio’s. Currently unemployed after working in the non-profit public health sector, she said her home is in preforeclosure and the prospects of her family losing health coverage at this time is “terrifying.”

“Masshealth has been amazing in terms of being able to see specialists,” Cronin DiCaprio said. Her eldest son relies on continuous follow-up care including annual heart screenings, visits with pediatric pulmonology specialists, behavioral health specialists, and prescription medications.

Now, state and national lawmakers, human rights groups, and ordinary people are raising serious concerns about the future of these programs under the current presidential administration.

“The threats are real, and I don’t want to minimize the threats and the amount of money on the table,” Massachusetts State Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, told The Shoestring in a phone interview. “It is a hole that is unfillable by the state when we look at all of the other major holes that have emerged from reckless and dangerous Trump administration actions.

Comerford said she “can’t minimize the devastation” of Trump and Republicans’ massive cuts to federal programs.

“We’re seeing rollbacks across every agency we care about,” she said.

***

During the first week of his presidential term, Trump caused far-reaching confusion, outrage, and fear with a slew of executive orders and an Office of Management and Budget memo that froze federal funds. The wording of the memo said that agencies whose work was in any way contradictory to the new ideology, outlined in the president’s executive orders, would need to find and assess those contradictions so the presidential administration could then decide the best uses for the funding “consistent with the law and the President’s priorities.”

Following the OMB memo, states reported being “cut off” from access to Medicaid systems. States regained access shortly afterward and the federal government has claimed that was caused by a technical “outage.”

Just a few days later, Trump’s billionaire buddy and the country’s biggest campaign donor to Trump and Republicans, Elon Musk, and his band of teenage and early 20’s tech bros who constitute the so-called Department of Government Efficiency were given access to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. They reportedly accessed key payment and contracting systems. This further compounded public and legislative fears that Medicaid and Medicare programs would be targeted for significant cuts.

The OMB memo has since been rescinded, but challenges in accessing federal funding have continued for many of its recipients.

In the weeks following, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to advance a budget proposal that directs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has authority over Medicaid, to find $880 billion in cuts.

Some Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have since claimed these proposed federal funding cuts will not affect Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security because the budget plan passed on Feb. 25 does not specifically contain the words “Medicare,” “Medicaid,” or “Social Security.”

Many experts have said this is misdirection, noting that it would be a near financial impossibility to make the proposed cuts without taking from at least one of those programs.

“Both Speaker Johnson, other House Republican leaders and President Trump have said that they do not want to cut Medicare,” Georgetown University health policy expert Edwin Park recently told NPR. “So if you take Medicare off the table, Medicaid constitutes 93% of all mandatory spending that remains under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee.”

This conclusion from Park is also supported by a Congressional Budget Office report from March 5.

The Shoestring relies on reader support to make independent news for western Massachusetts possible. You can support this kind of labor-intensive reporting by visiting our donate page.

When asked for an interview about the House budget in early March, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told The Shoestring in a statement that the “budget resolution threatens the health care of 2 million Massachusetts residents.”

“It would nearly double health care costs for hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents who rely on the Affordable Care Act and increase grocery bills for more than a million children and their families by gutting food assistance,” the statement said. “The Senate needs to reject this shameful attack on the health and wellbeing of children and families in Massachusetts and across our country.”

Healey’s response outlined the categories of people receiving coverage under Medicaid programs who were vulnerable to losing health services and coverage, which included people with disabilities, pregnant people, and newborns. Healey said one in four Massachusetts residents received some form of Medicaid coverage.

While the proposal has been met with nationwide disapproval from constituents across political parties, lawmakers passed another Republican-led stop-gap spending bill on March 14 — together with support from Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — that will fund the government through September.

Johnson and other lawmakers have defended the cuts, saying that the money will come from the elimination of “waste and fraud,” without citing any specific evidence. Musk, meanwhile, has seemingly referred to people receiving services through federal programs as “the parasite class.” Last month, he reposted a meme on social media that referred to “watching Trump slash federal programs knowing it doesn’t affect you because you’re not a member of the Parasite Class.”

***

With strict eligibility guidelines, it is hard to imagine where $880 billion worth of fraud might be in the Medicaid system.

Cronin DiCaprio and her family briefly lost coverage this past July due to missing a letter from MassHealth requiring her to update her household information and income — one of a list of annual requirements for maintaining coverage under the program.

During this gap in health coverage, Cronin DiCaprio said she ran out of prescription medications for herself and her older son, medications that cannot be stopped immediately and must be slowly tapered off. This gap came at a time during which the Fourth of July holiday closed and delayed many state and local offices.

“I was in the drive-thru pharmacy line at CVS in tears,” she said. An “incredibly kind” and “resourceful” pharmacist researched brand options and located every coupon and savings option that he could, but in the end she said she still ended up paying more than $2,000 for about two weeks of medication.

“I’m literally sitting in our house like a hysterical chemist, you know, trying to figure out how to taper him down on the antipsychotic meds that we had left so that he wouldn’t run out completely,” she said.

“It just feels like such an immovable obstacle, the cost associated with all elements of healthcare are really shocking,” she added.

Cronin DiCaprio also acknowledged a certain amount of privilege and agency due to her education — she has two master’s degrees — and her work-from-home job that allowed her to access and navigate the complex and time-consuming Medicaid system and ultimately regain health coverage for her family. Her job allowed her the flexibility to leave her phone on hold with the MassHealth system waiting to reach the relevant department staff for hours at a time on her desk while she did her regular work.

These hours-long wait times exist at current staffing and funding levels for the Medicaid program.

In addition to long wait times and complex paperwork, there are other barriers to coverage in the Medicaid system. The writer of this article, for example, receives Medicaid coverage based on disability status. This type of coverage, called CommonHealth, is re-evaluated annually, in some cases every two years. In addition to financial and residency verification requirements, Medicaid recipients of this designation must complete “disability supplement” paperwork rehashing their entire health history and seeing a state-selected provider for “evaluation.” For this writer, that is decades of health history spanning dozens of providers.

That system of “means testing” — and threats of getting kicked off disability insurance — simply doesn’t exist in the many countries worldwide that provide universal health care.

This eligibility process is not easy to navigate while living with, or caring for someone with, significant health issues. Challenges aside, if this Medicaid coverage disappeared, there is not currently an affordable health care alternative available for this writer.

While lawmakers continue to clash on spending packages, individuals and families across Massachusetts and the nation are waiting with worry and fear for their loved ones and community members.

”Even if we had to pay anything towards it, you know, we would just skip it, which is horrible to say, but that’s the position that we’re in,” Cronin DiCaprio said. “We would need to prioritize his prescriptions, you know, and he’s relatively stable in terms of his cardiac health, we would just, I don’t know, we would need to prioritize.”

***

It isn’t just patients who will suffer from cuts to Medicaid funding. Health clinics in rural Minnesota have reportedly already seen a bit of the impacts that would result from the funding cuts. During the federal funding freeze earlier this year triggered by the OMB memo, some clinics reported difficulty making payroll with some having to furlough staff.

These clinics, called community health centers, typically receive a significant portion of their operating costs from federal funding through Medicaid payments and federal grants. There are 15 community health centers here in the Connecticut River Valley, according to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers website, and many more across the state.

Federally qualified health centers, like CHC’s, play a critical role in providing health services, accepting patients regardless of their health insurance status, and providing services ranging from dental care to pediatric care and senior care. These centers also offer other social services like connections to food banks and housing services, which are also funded through federal grant support and contribute to community health and wellbeing. Funding cutbacks put all of these things at risk.

The loss of these centers will further burden the for-profit medical system as well. A 2020 study focused on Massachusetts concluded that federally qualified health centers, like CHC’s, increased access to health care in underserved areas and reduced spending on visits to emergency departments for non-emergency health needs.

Individual health providers will not be immune to these cuts either.

Cronin DiCaprio’s son has been seen by the same cardiologist since his open heart surgery in his first year of life. The family has been able to follow this doctor through his transition to private practice because of the MassHealth coverage at its current funding levels. Many providers will be forced to choose between keeping patients and being financially viable if cuts are made to the program.

When asked specifically what these funding cuts might look like locally, Sen. Comerford said she couldn’t speculate.

“We can certainly understand individual circumstances, but I don’t know what the systemic circumstances would be because you’d have to understand the scope from the federal government and then the state’s response,” Comerford said. Things are changing rapidly and people, families, workers, and businesses will be hurt by these actions, she added.

State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, similarly did not have a specific answer for what the local impacts of the cuts might look like.

“It’s not looking good,” she told The Shoestring in a March 14 interview.

Sabadosa said a lot will depend on the magnitude of the cuts.

“In broad strokes, we’re talking about people losing their health insurance if the cuts are as they have indicated they may be,” she said. “Western Massachusetts has a large number of residents who are on Medicaid.”

Sabadosa was certain that Massachusetts hospitals and community health centers would feel the impacts of these cuts with many of their patients’ payments coming from Medicaid coverage.

“We won’t be able to make up for all of these losses and so we’ll have to figure out a way to try to mitigate the situation to the greatest extent possible, and it’s going to be extremely challenging,” she said.

The cuts proposed in the House budget “would likely translate to billions of dollars of revenue cuts from MassHealth per year,” a statement by Healey’s office said.

In addition to potential loss of individual health care and overall state budget impacts, Healey’s statement said “ripple effects” will include losses of jobs at hospitals and other health care positions, negative impacts on caregivers relying on long-term care services for loved ones receiving Medicaid coverage, and mounting pressure on an “already fragile health care system” potentially impacting health care access for all residents across the state.

Public outrage at lawmakers’ town halls nationwide has been so widespread it prompted Johnson, the Republican House speaker, to advise GOP lawmakers not to attend their own town halls.

When asked what was being done by elected officials in Massachusetts to evaluate and mitigate these cuts, Sabadosa said Massachusetts was “leading” in bringing lawsuits against the federal government and Trump administration in court. She also said public pressure does seem to be having some impact, and possibly stalled or reversed some actions taken by the Trump administration so far. She said people should continue to contact their federal representatives and show up to their town halls.

“Unfortunately, our federal government is not a reliable partner at the moment,” she said. “In fact, I would argue that they are abandoning the states. And because that is happening, we need more people to step up locally, however that may be, to support each other.”

Comerford had a similar response to those questions, saying Massachusetts was quickly challenging federal actions in the courts, and encouraged constituents to continue to contact her office.

“We’re fighting like hell every day to protect our people,” she said. “That is my job. 
I’m gonna keep resisting and fighting and backing,” Comerford said. “We believe the state can, and should, be a line of defense and we will keep pushing.”

Rural Americans – particularly men – are expected to live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts, according to our research, recently published in the Journal of Rural Health.

We found that a 60-year-old man living in a rural area is expected on average to live two fewer years than an urban man. For women, the rural-urban gap is six months.

A key reason is worse rates among rural people for smoking, obesity and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. These conditions are condemning millions to disability and shortened lives.

What’s more, these same people live in areas where medical care is evaporating. Living in rural areas, with their relatively sparse populations, often means a shortage of doctors, longer travel distances for medical care and inadequate investments in public health, driven partly by declines in economic opportunities.

Our team arrived at these findings by using a simulation called the Future Elderly Model. With that, we were able to simulate the future life course of Americans currently age 60 living in either an urban or rural area.

The model is based on relationships observed in 20 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing survey that follows people from age 51 through the rest of their lives. Specifically, the model showed how long these Americans might live, the expected quality of their future years, and how certain changes in lifestyle would affect the results.

We describe the conditions that drive our results as “diseases of despair,” building off the landmark work of pioneering researchers who coined the now widely used term “deaths of despair.” They documented rising mortality among Americans without a college degree and related these deaths to declines in social and economic prospects.

The main causes of deaths of despair – drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide – have also been called “diseases of despair.” But the conditions we study, such as heart disease, could similarly be influenced by social and economic prospects. And they can profoundly reduce quality of life.

We also found that if rural education levels were as high as in urban areas, this would eliminate almost half of the rural-urban life-expectancy gap. Our data shows 65% of urban 60-year-olds were educated beyond high school, compared with 53% of rural residents the same age.

One possible reason for the difference is that getting a bachelor’s degree may make a person more able or willing to follow scientific recommendations – and more likely to work out for 150 minutes a week or eat their veggies as their doctor advises them to.

Why it matters

The gap between urban and rural health outcomes has widened over recent decades. Yet the problem goes beyond disparities between urban and rural health: It also splits down some of the party lines and social divides that separate U.S. citizens, such as education and lifestyle.

Scholarship on the decline of rural America suggests that people living outside larger cities are resentful of the economic forces that may have eroded their economic power. The interplay between these forces and the health conditions we study are less appreciated.

Economic circumstances can contribute to health outcomes. For example, increased stress and sedentary lifestyle due to joblessness can contribute to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease. Declines in economic prospects due to automation and trade liberalization are linked to increases in mortality.

But health can also have a strong influence on economic outcomes. Hospitalizations cause high medical costs, loss of work and earnings, and increases in bankruptcy. The onset of chronic disease and disability can lead to long-lasting declines in income. Even health events experienced early in childhood can have economic consequences decades later.

In tandem, these health and economic trends might reinforce each other and help fuel inequality between rural and urban areas that produces a profoundly different quality of life.

What still isn’t known

It should be noted that our results, like many studies, are describing outcomes on average; the rural population is not a monolith. In fact, some of the most physically active and healthy people we know live in rural areas.

Just how much your location affects your health is an ongoing area of research. But as researchers begin to understand more, we can come up with strategies to promote health among all Americans, regardless of where they live.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett was the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress while conducting some of this research.

Currid-Halkett is on the Scholars’ Council for the nonprofit Braver Angels.

Bryan Tysinger receives funding from NIA.

Jack Chapel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

On Dec. 18, the Greenfield City Council took an action meant to, as one city councilor put it, “integrate disability justice” into local governance: passed an ordinance codifying remote access to its municipal meetings.

The state opened up the possibility of remote access to public meetings — from city councils and school committees to planning boards — amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Those temporary provisions allowing for remote access to public meetings are set to expire, however, on March 31. Gov. Maura Healey had signed the extension of hybrid access for governance meetings in 2023. 

State lawmakers have not passed any law guaranteeing hybrid access to the public. One bill, H. 4771, known as “an act to modernize participation in public meetings,” has been stuck in committee since June of last year. That has raised concerns among a coalition of groups, including the Disability Law Center, the Boston Center for Independent Living, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, and several press organizations.

“Hybrid access to public meetings has been transformative for people who previously faced barriers to exclusively in-person meetings — people who are immunocompromised or have a disability, people who have young children or care for disabled or aging family members, people with limited transit options, and more,” the groups said in a statement. “Universal hybrid access is essential going forward.”

In the early months of 2023, the ACLU of Massachusetts conducted a survey of every city council, select board, and school committee in the state which found that “more than half of those bodies are already conducting fully hybrid or live-streamed meetings.” But some, it seems, are doing so by updating the rules of their public bodies rather than passing an ordinance — a more permanent step guaranteeing remote access in the future.

That’s what Greenfield has now accomplished. City Councilor Katherine Golub presented the ordinance to the council with an amendment. The amendment added language to ensure that all municipal hybrid meetings are “in accordance with the American Disabilities Act.” 

“What inspired it is an attempt to integrate disability justice into how I see the world and govern,” Golub said. “And an attempt to make our governing as participatory as possible.”

Golub said that hybrid meetings benefit a variety of people, allowing them to participate in their local governance. She said that hybrid meetings not only increase accessibility for those with disabilities, but for single caretakers of children like herself as well. 

Golub isn’t the only local city councilor facing that reality. In Northampton, for example, City Councilor Rachel Maiore told The Shoestring in 2023 that as a single mother of three, remote and hybrid meeting structure were “pivotal” to her ability to continue to serve on the body. 

“Our Council meetings can often run four or five hours, so for me having to secure childcare and take out food would be prohibitive,” she said at the time.

Golub said she steered and organized the developmental meetings for the ordinance. The initiative to codify hybrid meetings was presented to Golub by Massachusetts ACLU organizing strategist, Javier Luengo-Garrido, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Full disclosure: Luengo-Garrido is on The Shoestring’s advisory board, which does not have any editorial role in our independent newsroom.) But the collaborative development of the ordinance started at the beginning of last year. Over the course of the year, Luengo-Garrido proposed language on behalf of the ACLU for the ordinance to Golub. Golub then brought the language to various city officials who provided input and feedback that were “integrated and addressed.”

Luengo-Garrido said that due to the pandemic, many meetings have been held remotely. The ACLU noticed an increased engagement of people with mobility issues, disabilities, and single parents to not only participate by attending meetings, but to give testimony when given the opportunity to do so in their home. He said that elected officials in Greenfield were “highly interested” in keeping civic participation accessible and that their willingness enabled them to work proactively on the development of the ordinance.

Speaking on the broader impacts of increasing accessibility, Luengo-Garrido said that the passing of the ordinance aids in the understanding of “the ways those cities can work to protect minorities” as well as “helping people access city services” and “feeling comfortable in understanding that those cities and towns are welcoming communities.” 

The ordinance was written in collaboration with various city officials, which included staff from economic development, the IT director, the communications director, and several others. 

“It’s an example of our power to create change at a local level, especially when we collaborate well,” Golub said.

Golub said she reached out to Greenfield’s IT director, Fernado Fleury, prior to the start of the present mayoral administration and was “buoyed” by his enthusiasm and willingness to support the ordinance.

Fleury did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Anytime you can include the public more is a wonderful thing,” Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher said. “We have a huge senior population here … This allows them to participate in the meeting.”

Matt Conway, the communications director for the city of Greenfield, manages the recording of meetings for boards and commissions. Conway said that Golub worked to ensure that the ordinance was “effective, actionable, and something that the city could consistently execute and maintain.” 

Conway said the establishment of hybrid meetings is a method of having increased public engagement. And having more opportunities for people to participate aids the city’s goal of consistent accessibility in a world still living with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city also established remote access for other governing boards, including the Board of Health, Planning Board, and the Historical Commission.

Conway said that there are also other benefits to hybrid meetings on top of increased accessibility. 

“There’s nothing quite like having the actual archive of the meeting itself,” Conway said. “It’s of a great benefit to our residents, the city itself, and to anyone else looking to learn about Greenfield.” 

That includes those looking to hold local governments accountable. Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, told The Shoestring that having access to governance and the ability to engage with representatives is a “civil rights issue” and that access to hybrid meetings is “a matter of equity.” 

It’s unclear, though, whether those efforts to increase democracy will stay at the local level or receive broader backing from state lawmakers and the governor. The coalition of organizations supporting continued statewide hybrid-access provisions, which included the ACLU of Massachusetts, warned back in April 2024 of the consequences of failing to extend those protections.

“The countdown is on: If lawmakers don’t act this session, people with disabilities or other reasons they can’t attend meetings will be completely shut out when city councils, select boards, or school committees decide to hold meetings exclusively in person,” the statement said. “Accessibility makes our democracy stronger, and we can’t afford to close the door on these perspectives and communities.”

Previously, Healey had put forward a bill that would have left decisions on hybrid meeting access up to individual municipalities — a proposal the coalition including the ACLU called “a major step backward.”

Golub said she would like to see hybrid meeting laws codified at the state level and expressed concern over the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump and its broad impacts. 

“In a time of decreasing access for public participation at the federal level, I believe that we have a fierce responsibility to everything we can to protect public participation,” Golub said. “Our opportunity for doing that the most is on the local and state level.”

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Every four years, national media turn their attention to the Rust Belt, a term that describes Midwestern industrial and manufacturing states whose economies were decimated by the decline of those industries in the 1970s. This region contains the coveted states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Many rural parts of these states have a majority of white residents. The broader Rust Belt, however, also has long and important Black and Indigenous histories and contains some of the nation’s fastest-growing minority populations – in particular Latino, Arab and Asian communities.

Yet when reporters descend on the rural Rust Belt to understand voters, the people they talk to are almost exclusively white.

I am a geographer who studies the experiences of communities of color in the rural Rust Belt. Rural is a relative term, but when it comes to policy research, it usually refers to nonmetropolitan areas. From 2021 to 2023, I interviewed 35 people who live or lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana and identified as Black, Indigenous or people of color.

I found that these Rust Belt residents have pressing concerns of political importance. Some of these issues are shared by white residents – and, as such, are well documented. But Rust Belt residents of color have additional problems that politicians and the media have long overlooked.

Local impacts

My interviewees described typical rural Rust Belt struggles.

They complained of limited internet access, few or no grocery stores, declining roads and other infrastructure-related challenges. Jobs and opportunities for career advancement were scarce in their communities, while death and suicide rates were high.

These difficulties are faced by white Rust Belt residents as well. But other struggles they mentioned are less often considered part of the rural experience.

They described feeling socially isolated and discriminated against at work and school. Many had experienced racial or ethnic profiling by potential employers and police and been verbally harassed.

One man, Miguel, who worked in carpentry, said his colleagues openly used racial slurs against him.

“I was putting away some boxes, and they said, ‘Oh that’s because you w–backs are good at packing things in trucks,’” he told me.

All names used here are pseudonyms; research ethics require me to protect the identity of my subjects.

“A lot gets brushed under the rug,” said Bao, a Vietnamese American woman whose father also works in a hostile environment. “All the management folks are white,” so “if you speak up, you lose your job or are ignored.”

These comments conveyed an overall sense of not “belonging.”

As one woman from rural Pennsylvania explained, people regularly ask her, “No, really, where you from?”

“They want to hear ‘Asian’ or ‘Korean,’” she said. “It’s very uncomfortable for me.”

These racial tensions worsen during election periods. Some people I interviewed reported having been turned away or threatened at voting stations – harassment they attributed to their religious, cultural and political backgrounds, or the way they looked.

Many Rust Belt voters of color already lack political power because they live in racially gerrymandered districts. When news coverage of the region ignores their voices, too, it compounds that feeling of not belonging.

In 2017, The Washington Post visited the small town of Jefferson, Ohio, in Ashtabula County, to interview voters described as “rural Americans who fear they’re being forgotten” after Donald Trump’s election. Their coverage focused almost exclusively on white residents.

“How did you go to Ashtabula County and not see Black people?” asked Belle, a resident who identified as African American.

Not always Republican

In the past three presidential elections, Ashtabula County has followed state trends: It backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, then voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Trump won Ashtabula with 60% of the vote in 2020. That’s 26,890 votes, which means that 16,497 people still voted for Democrat Joe Biden. In the years since, Ashtabula County residents have also voted with the state in two Democratic-backed initiatives: to protect abortion rights and legalize marijuana.

In other words, just because a state or district backs a Republican for president doesn’t mean everyone is Republican, or that Republican voters always vote the party line. They can split their votes, and have.

Even Ohio’s largely Republican delegation in the House of Representatives is misleading about the state’s political makeup. Ohio is a heavily gerrymandered state where voting districts have been drawn to benefit Republican candidates.

U.S. Senate elections show more diversity in Ohio’s voting base.

In 2018, Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown won 53% of all votes in Ohio, including 51% of those cast in Ashtabula County. Four years later, both the state and Ashtabula County picked Republican JD Vance over Democrat Tim Ryan to replace the outgoing Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

Why it matters

In September 2024, Vance – now Trump’s vice presidential running mate – claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats and dogs. After Trump echoed that false claim on the debate stage, the city got 30-plus bomb threats and other threats of violence, and had to close multiple schools.

During the pandemic, Trump’s derogatory branding of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” led to increased hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

In my interviews, several participants mentioned how local restaurants and stores owned by Asian Americans had been vandalized. One woman, Lanh, who lived outside Springfield, said her favorite restaurant had to close.

“They started vandalizing the restaurant, writing graffiti and set the restaurant on fire,” she said.

The owners were from Thailand, but, Lanh said, the vandals “thought they were Chinese. Folks around the local community like my parents didn’t feel safe,” she added. “I didn’t feel safe.”

Hateful political rhetoric is known to increase hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

When the Rust Belt is stereotyped as red and white, such experiences go unheard.

So do some good news stories.

The emergence of Black-owned bee farms in northeast Ohio, for instance, is one small example in a host of businesses started by people of color. Together, they are helping to boost the region’s beleaguered economy, much as Haitian immigrants have been fueling Springfield’s growth.

Rural America is nuanced

Nationwide, 24% of rural Americans identified as people of color in the 2020 census.

That figure is probably low because the census tends to undercount nonwhite respondents – a problem that was particularly evident in 2020. Even so, that’s a quarter of rural residents who don’t fit the national stereotype of rural America.

Rural America is white and Republican. It’s also trans, queer, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, South Asian, Democratic and much more. Even if some are Republican, they still aren’t the rural Rust Belt Republicans portrayed in the national media.

Ignoring these nuances reinforces stereotypes that the rural Rust Belt is the exclusive domain of white conservativism. But this region isn’t now, and never has been, simply red and white.

Christabel Devadoss received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

In a highly competitive presidential election year, candidates for state and local office in rural areas know that every vote counts. While so-called down-ballot races frequently go uncontested, Democrats and Republicans alike are switching their strategies to contest candidates who would otherwise run unopposed in rural districts.

Historically, voters in rural districts in places like Missouri, New York, and North Carolina have had one option as they move down the ballot: a Republican. But this year, Democrats are running their own candidates and contesting Republicans in red rural districts.

Read More

This Year, Investment in Rural Votes Isn’t Just at the Top of the Ticket

Vice presidential candidates with rural bona fides have garnered plenty of attention this election cycle, but political strategists from both parties recognize that down-ballot races may prove just as important when it comes to rural votes. 

There’s one place though, where the reverse is true.

In Massachusetts’ three rural counties, it is the Democrats who typically run for state and local office without opposition. This year, new leadership in the Massachusetts Republican Party – Mass GOP – is working to change that. Among the races the party is paying closest attention to are those in the state’s rural districts. 

“We’re definitely more committed to down-ballot candidates than the party has been in the last two election cycles,” Mass GOP Executive Director John Milligan told the Daily Yonder.

Massachusetts has elected Democrats in every presidential race since 1984, when voters cast their ballots to elect Ronald Reagan for a second term. Currently, the state’s delegation to Congress is completely blue. At the state level, there is a supermajority of Democrats, who control both sides of the state legislature. 

For candidates like David Rosa in the Western part of the state, the supermajority is a real issue. 

“Our one-state party is really a dilemma for all concerned,” Rosa said in an email to the Daily Yonder. 

Rosa is running for State Senate to represent Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire, a rural district in Western Massachusetts. Rosa will be on the ballot next to incumbent Paul Mark, who has held the office since 2022 – where he won against a candidate unaffiliated with either party. 

For those living in Franklin County, Massachusetts – which is among the counties in the Senate district where Rosa is running, the choices will narrow as voters move down the ballot. In Franklin County’s first state representative district, a Democrat runs unopposed. There are no Republican challengers further down either. Democrats are the only ones running candidates for lower offices like Clerk of Courts and Register of Deeds in Franklin County.

Milligan said the uncontested races in Franklin County are symbolic of the GOP’s struggles in rural parts of the region as a whole. Milligan said understanding that the rural populace in Massachusetts looks quite different from other parts of the country is essential to succeeding in these races.

“I don’t think the population of Nantucket matches the population of rural Pennsylvania,” Milligan said. 

On the other side of the state, Republican State Senate candidate Christopher Lauzon is making connections with small-town Massachusetts voters in an attempt to build a broad coalition. Lauzon is running in the Cape and Islands district, which includes Barnstable and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The district is another one where Democrats dominate.

Lauzon will be one of the only Republican candidates for a state-level office on the ballot in Cape Cod and the Islands. A Democrat, Thomas Moakley, is uncontested for State Representative, and no Republicans are on the ballot for local-level offices in Dukes County (Martha’s Vineyard) or Nantucket County. 

On the ground, Lauzon said his campaign is focused on building a broad coalition across what he described as a varied geographic district with different communities. 

“Obviously, national politics can complicate things, but I really try to separate the local from the national,” Lauzon said. “No matter who wins the presidential race, no matter who you support for that, your local races have a much larger impact.”

The post Nationally, Republicans Are the Ones Running Unopposed in Rural. For MA It’s the Opposite.  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

This article is a collaboration by The Shoestring and the Montague Reporter, and was featured in the latter’s September 19, 2024 edition.

SPRINGFIELD – In Massachusetts, it is illegal for a city or town to regulate how much a private property owner can charge for rent – except at mobile home parks. 

In 1994, state legislators narrowly passed the Rent Control Prohibition Act, which dissolved municipal rent control boards and made local regulation of rental rates, or the price of services provided to tenants, illegal. Mobile home parks and publicly-subsidized housing were excluded from the ban because they tend to house some of society’s most vulnerable: the elderly, disabled, or poor. Residents at mobile home parks typically rent the land, which comes with water, electricity, and sewer hookups, and own the homes they park on it.

In Ludlow, Orange, and elsewhere across the state, rent control boards are arbitrating bitter struggles between landowners seeking rent increases, and residents who say they fear being priced out and losing their homes. The housing advocacy organization Springfield No One Leaves (SNOL) is helping tenants at several parks in western Massachusetts organize to fight rent hikes. 

“Manufactured home parks are really one of our last truly affordable homeownership opportunities,” SNOL director Rose Webster-Smith told the Reporter. “People who built these communities should be allowed to stay in these communities – they shouldn’t be priced out.”

Last week, residents of the West Street Village Mobile Home Community in Ludlow rallied with SNOL members outside the Springfield housing court ahead of a hearing to appeal their city’s approval of a 142% rent increase. 

Veteran Springfield housing rights attorney Joel Feldman is representing the residents. “We don’t take these cases unless we believe they are wrongly decided,” Feldman told the Reporter. “This was another situation where the landlord had a lawyer, and the tenants didn’t.”

The West Street Village tenants allege that owner Tom Lennon provided the rent control board with inflated business expenses and appraisals to justify the increase. The decision to approve the hike was “arbitrary and capricious” and should be reversed, according to Feldman’s court filing, because the board failed to follow proper procedures, and lacked the proper evidence needed to justify the increase.

Members of the board must file a deposition, Feldman said, and a decision on the appeal is expected soon. 

“It’s not my job as a legislator to legislate the morality of people, but my goodness, I’ve never seen this type of greed,” said state representative Aaron Saunders, whose district includes Ludlow. “I can’t get past that type of thing happening to folks in our community.”

Saunders grew up in Ludlow, not far from West Street Village, and when he heard Lennon planned to raise the lot rent from $207 per month to $500.06, he and state senator Jacob Oliveira visited the park to hear from residents. They learned that many people in the development have been dealing with significant electrical, sewer, and heating issues that they say Lennon has failed to address.

“Setting aside the greed, the obscene greed, that’s in play here,” Saunders said, “I’m hopeful that the housing court sends a clear message – not only to Tom Lennon, but to anybody else who would try to fudge numbers to try to extract more money from folks who can afford it the least.” 

Ripple Effect

Two years ago, motivated by conditions at the park and the prospect of rent hikes, West Street Village residents formed a tenants’ association with help from SNOL. Ethan Field, a longtime resident who started talking with his neighbors about the issues, became a leader of the group.

“I said, ‘You have problems, and so do the rest of us, and it’s in all of our best interests to come together to fight this thing,’” Field told the Reporter. “This is an aging park in need of repair, with zero amenities, but it is the highest-priced all-ages community of its kind in the greater Springfield area… This has a potential ripple effect, across the board, for [setting] the new bar for so-called affordable living.”

Lennon did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The sole listed manager of the southeastern Massachusetts-based real estate investment firm Gold Rush Properties 1, LLC, Lennon purchased the Ludlow park in 2021. He also owns the Hillside Valley Mobile Home Community in the same city, and the Residences on Mill Pond in West Stockbridge.

“He just seems money-hungry,” said Russ Lemon, a resident at Hillside Valley, where the monthly lot rent increased from $288 to $386 after Lennon’s arrival. “There is just no consideration for the people here, many like myself who are disabled or of retirement age.”

Unlike in Ludlow, the West Stockbridge rent control board closely scrutinized Lennon’s application for a 230% rent increase at the Residences on Mill Pond, and in May denied his request. Lennon is now appealing that decision, Webster-Smith said.

In Chicopee, tenants at Bluebird Acres Mobile Home Park are currently appealing an approved increase, while at the same time some are trying to purchase the park and establish it as a cooperative. Feldman and SNOL organizers, who are helping with both efforts, said they believe Lennon is also trying to purchase Bluebird Acres, and possibly two additional parks in the region. 

“We’re seeing a lot of these Boston investors coming out and buying property in the area, and it’s going to gentrify it,” Webster-Smith said. “A lot of our seniors are living in these parks, a lot of our differently-abled people… People are desperate right now. We have a huge housing crisis, and a huge shortage of affordable housing.”

Dead on the Hill

Today, about two dozen of Massachusetts’s 351 municipalities have mobile home park rent control boards. The laws establishing the entities are typically decades old, and many towns struggle to fill them with volunteers willing and able to follow complicated – and high-stakes – decision-making procedures.

“Unfortunately, many rent control boards don’t do this correctly,” Feldman said. “It’s really a shame, because it’s very important to the lives of the people living there.”

In recent years advocates have had a hard time getting housing protection legislation through the Joint Committee on Housing. Six bills filed in the most recent legislative session would have implemented some form of rent control in the Commonwealth, according to Webster-Smith, and each of them ended in a study committee.

One bill sent to study, co-sponsored by Springfield senator Adam Gomez and supported by the Homes For All Coalition, would have repealed the ban on rent control statewide. The city councils of Boston and Somerville have requested permission to enact rent control on a local level, but were not approved. Another bill would have created a “rental arbiter” position within the attorney general’s office, while another would have capped the rent increases that can be imposed on senior citizens.

“What the hell is our state legislature doing?” Webster-Smith said. “If you look at the amount of bills that were filed versus what is passed, what are we doing?”

Legislative pressure is also being applied from the industry side. 

“[W]hile rent control is often initially viewed as a safeguard to protect residents, it ultimately undermines the stability it seeks to create,” Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, told the Reporter. “In reality, rent control policies result in decreased investments for necessary community repairs and upgrades, and negatively impact residents.”

Hometown America, an Illinois-based corporation that owns 80 manufactured home communities in 12 states, has spent $300,000 since 2021 lobbying to change the Massachusetts law requiring that all residents of a mobile home park be charged the same rent, WBUR’s Simón Rios reported this summer.

Residents of Miller’s Woods and River Bend, a manufactured-home park for seniors in Athol, have partnered with tenants of another Hometown park in Middleborough to sue the company for not complying with the uniformity law. Hometown, which has lost once in court, is now trying to overturn the law.

This year, for the second session in a row, a bill to create a mobile home park rent control board in Athol was sent to study. Attleboro and Plainville have also passed home-rule petitions in recent years to establish rent control boards, with little success.

“It’s a difficult policy to pass but a little frustrating as there is a rent control board in Orange for a similar property which lies a mile or so away as the crow flies from the River Bend,” state representative Susannah Whipps wrote in an email to the Reporter.

Rates of Return

Orange’s rent control board has been meeting since June to decide on a proposed 43% rent increase at that park, Leisure Woods Estates. It would be the second significant hike in two years, and Leisure Woods management is requesting that it be applied retroactive to the date of their initial request last fall. 

In justifying the request, the company’s lawyer has suggested that due to the depressed economic condition of Orange, “a higher rate of return is warranted as such conditions pose more of a risk.”

“There’s going to be a lot of homeless people with no housing to go to,” Orange Council on Aging director Tracey Gaudet testified at a June hearing. “I just can’t imagine where the money is going to come from, or how these people are going to survive.”

At the Orange hearings, several residents expressed frustration with the park owner, particularly concerning paving, tree removal, and stormwater management. After being asked for more information to justify the increase from $410 to $588, including vendor invoices, Leisure Wood’s management is threatening to sue the town.

Glenn Gidley, who co-owns Leisure Woods and six other parks in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, also owns Salem Manufactured Homes, which builds, transports, and sells homes to park residents. The company’s website describes it as a “thriving, vertically integrated family business,” though Gidley has testified that the companies are entirely separate.

Years ago, Feldman helped Leisure Woods residents win a suit forcing the owners to address flooding, neglected road maintenance, and other infrastructure concerns. Longtime resident Alfred Henderson was one of the plaintiffs. Today Henderson, a widower in his 90s, says that if the rent increase is approved in full, he plans to pay the difference into an escrow account until the matter is appealed in court, and he hopes others will do the same.

An Uneven Game

Eviction from a mobile home park is a much faster and less forgiving process than a foreclosure. Residents are frequently left with no way to relocate the structures they own, which once arrived on trailers but are now immobile. 

“The [park] owners have tremendously more leverage in that situation than they do in any other landlord-tenant relationship,” Saunders argued. “And then, not only are these folks without a place to live, but the value they did have in their property is sold for a fraction of what it’s worth.”

Since Tom Lennon’s purchase of Ludlow’s West Street Village park, a number of residents have moved out and sold their homes to him. According to Ethan Field, new arrivals then bought the homes from Lennon for a much higher price.

“Many who purchased from him also financed through him,” Field added. “It’s not only lot rent – they also pay a mortgage directly to him.”

Field said many of his neighbors feel “trapped,” paying too much in rent but unable to move or sell their homes. “The astronomically high lot rent, for what you’re getting, is preventing you from selling it at a reasonable fair market rate,” he said. “You may be stuck having to take some incredibly low offer.”

Webster-Smith also accused Lennon of trying to intimidate and discourage residents at his parks from organizing. Tenants, she said, have been told to call Lennon – or the police – if anyone knocks on their door to discuss issues with management.

“These are all human beings that live in these parks, and they deserve to be treated as such,” she said. “Every tenant has the right to organize.”

Saunders lauded the West Street Village residents for their ongoing efforts. “They have done incredible work, and they have done it in the face of veiled threats and pushback, and every type of divisive tactic you can imagine,” he said. “They stuck with it, and getting that far is an inspiration. It should be a model to folks in other parks to see how to do it right.”

The rent control cases in Orange and Ludlow are ongoing, and decisions could be made in the coming weeks. The Orange board will continue to deliberate on Leisure Woods’s proposal at its next meeting on September 24, and a decision on the Ludlow appeal is expected at the end of the month. 

“The case is going to be instrumental in directing us in what changes need to be made to this statute in Ludlow,” Saunders said. “If they say, ‘Yes, this thing is unfair, and it’s greedy, but it’s not illegal,’ then we need to have a conversation about what needs to change.”

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