It was the cuts to federal child care subsidies that landed Eboney Mitchell in eviction court. 

Mitchell said having daycare for her two children allowed her to work and keep up with her monthly rent. Her rent was $1,300 a month, she said.

“Then they cut day care off,” she said. 

Mitchell had to take time off to care for her two children while she scrambled to make other arrangements. She lost her job. She got behind on her rent. Eventually, she found two part-time jobs to replace the one she lost. She got the money, but the property company told her it was too late. 

Sitting outside the Oklahoma County’s eviction courtroom, she paged through the fees stacked on by her landlord. Quickly, her $1,300 rent ballooned up to more than $3,000 as her landlord tacked on charge after charge, including late fees, attorney’s fees, and $200 for an unapproved pet charge for her son’s service animal. 

“My son is autistic,” she said. “I have the paperwork for that dog.”

Mitchell isn’t alone. The recent government shutdown, which included would-be cuts to the federal child care subsidies, Head Start and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, along with furloughs, has created such crises throughout Oklahoma among low and middle-income families. 

According to the FAQ on the Oklahoma State Department of Human Services website, SNAP benefits returned to normal Nov. 13, but many child care subsidies for school-age children will not, due to federal budget cuts enacted during the shutdown.

“The federal government shutdown has paused funding for many programs nationwide, including child care assistance,”  the announcement states. “Because nearly 75% of Oklahoma Human Services (OKDHS) funding comes from federal sources, we must adjust the Child Care Subsidy program to preserve available resources for as long as possible. The change takes effect on November 1, 2025. Eligibility for children 6 years of age and older who do not fit within one of the exceptions will be closed or removed at the next renewal.”

There are other cuts. SNAP, once known as Food Stamps, is a subsidy that provides money to the needy to buy food. In Oklahoma, the more than 600,000 who receive SNAP benefits were told theirs would be cut by about 35%. That would mean a family of four, expecting to receive $994 for food, would instead receive $646, a loss of $347 to the household budget. 

For families already struggling to keep up with rising rent costs, that is enough to push them over the edge, said Brad Senters, the director of eviction prevention for Shelterwell, a housing advocacy group in Oklahoma. Senters regularly acts as a mediator in eviction hearings in Oklahoma County.

“ If you’re in eviction court, it’s probably not the only adversity you’re first facing that week,” Senters said. “Especially if you’re on a really tight budget, $50 can mean a lot.” 

Senters said that a $50 shortfall — or more, in the case of a larger family — means $50 that was supposed to go toward rent is instead spent on food for the family. 

Senters said the political wrangling that led to the government shutdown has real effects on people at the street level, often with very hard outcomes for those struggling.

“ One bill comes out of nowhere and it’s a snowball effect of just destroying a budget that’s already really tight anyway,” he said.  “I honestly don’t come across a lot of tenants that are getting their hair done or who are buying cars. I know a lot of people want to think that that’s what it is, but I just don’t see it. It’s people struggling, doing their best to get by. And, you know, one hiccup can lose your house.”

By Nov. 13, the federal government announced a return to the full, pre-shutdown SNAP amounts, but that means the hiccup happened for thousands of families.

While November saw partial payments of approximately 65 percent of the full amount for SNAP normally sent to needy families, such projections may not have panned out equally to his clients, Senters said. 

“Even that first payment they got back was partial,” he said. “I talked to somebody who was normally getting a couple hundred bucks and their first payment back was, like, 25 bucks.”

Senters said other cuts have had as bad, or worse, effects. 

“Then there was a furloughed worker I had a mediation with a few weeks ago,” Senters said. “Luckily, the landlord was willing to work with her because of that. They didn’t have to, but she was still working, but not getting paid. Hopefully, that kind of catches back up.”

Landlord’s Choice

In a recent, packed eviction hearing in the Oklahoma County Courthouse, property manager Trey Parker stood before Oklahoma County Special Judge Trent Pipes to cite evictions he filed, referring to them from a sheaf of paperwork in his hands. In a number of them, Parker only named “occupants” of a given address. 

Pipes smiled slightly at Parker. 

“You’re suing for rent?” he asked Parker. 

Parker smiled and nodded. 

“ I’d like to talk to you about all these cases where you just list ‘occupants,’” Pipes said. “I’ve got questions. If you don’t name a person, how do you get a judgment against them for jurisdiction?  I know it’s a technical question that lawyers and judges worry about. But it’s never done anything to slow you down, right?”

“Right,” Parker said. 

Then the judge returned to calling the docket, which included about 200 cases that day.

Outside the courtroom, Parker admitted to intentionally leaving some occupants’ names off the filings. He only wanted to get his renters’ attention, he said. He said he didn’t want it to go on their permanent record. Renters who are defendants in an eviction filing find it very difficult to arrange for another place to live because many landlords will not rent to someone with an eviction record. Parker said that cutting them a break by not including their names will help them out down the line, but it also means he has no recourse if they don’t pay.

“No one wants to file an eviction.”

Trey Parker

“Typically, we always try to strike a deal,” Parker said. “No one wants to file an eviction.  Ideally, a contract is a contract, you know. Rent is due on the first and late on the fifth, and that’s how that goes. And then some people fall short. Some people are habitually short, and then some people just hit hard times.”

He said that some of his renters were coming up short because the cut in SNAP benefits was forcing them to choose between rent or food for their families. 

Indicating the papers in his hands, he said he had to file 45 eviction notices in court that day. While a few did have the names of the renters on them, many didn’t. He said he would be able to make a deal with most of them.

“This month’s a little more than usual just because of the holiday,” he said. “And I’m certain it’s also because of the food stamps.” 

SNAP Cuts Are Only the Beginning

A recent Oklahoma Watch story profiled a family with limited income who fell short of SNAP benefits and had to pay out of pocket for food, leaving them unable to pay their rent. They faced almost immediate eviction. 

A survey published last week by Mental Health Association Oklahoma showed how severe the problem is shaping up to be. According to the account published on its website, between November 12-26, the association, along with support from Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, surveyed 79 households facing eviction in Oklahoma County. The survey found that 57% had SNAP benefits but lost access to them on Nov. 1, and that 73% believed the loss of SNAP benefits directly contributed to their eviction.

“The shutdown’s ripple effects did not stop there,” the survey stated. “Twenty-four percent of all surveyed households lost a job, hours, or pay because of the government shutdown. And 84% of those households told us that the unexpected loss of income directly led to their eviction.”

The survey concluded that stability for many Oklahomans is fragile.

“ I think that the fact that so many of them had not experienced an eviction prior to this really reinforces that it was the loss of SNAP benefits that led to this particular eviction,” said Amy Coldren, the director of advocacy and communication for Mental Health Association Oklahoma. “So these are not families that are routinely falling behind on rent that are often finding themselves in eviction court. These are families that were getting by. They may have been barely getting by, but they were getting by. They were able to pay their rent, they were able to stay housed. And then this particular event, this loss of SNAP benefits or this loss of wages or hours, it really did send them into a crisis.”

The benefit cuts are falling disproportionately on single mothers and their children, on the disabled, and on the elderly, to whom even a $100 shortfall can lead to an eviction. Coldren said one of the survey respondents was an elderly disabled woman whose disability payments were approximately $900 a month, and the SNAP benefits were her lifeline.

“That leaves her with this tiny margin, and she loses snap benefits,” Coldren said. “If you only have less than $200 of disposable income, it’s not actually disposable because she’s having to use that for her utilities, for any medications that she might be on, any other expenses, all has to come out of that. A hundred dollars? She doesn’t have anything extra. There’s no extra.”

Sabine Brown, the housing policy analyst at the Oklahoma Policy Institute in Tulsa, said many Oklahoma renters were facing hardship before the cuts started. 

“ Oklahoma renters were already struggling to make ends meet,” Brown said. “They were not in a position to absorb any lost income subsidies or childcare. Half of Oklahoma renters earn less than the annual income needed, which is nearly $44,000 per year to afford a two-bedroom rental.”

With many cuts set to continue or worsen with the coming year, as well as another possible government shutdown in January, the problem is about to get worse, Brown said.

“ More than seven out of 10 extremely low-income families who rent in Oklahoma are severely cost burdened,” Brown said. “That means that they’re spending more than 50% of their income on rent. For those families, one emergency, like a missed SNAP payment, missed wages, or missed childcare, can lead to missed rent and put them at really high risk, for eviction, housing instability, or even homelessness.”

Brown said the convergence of cuts are combining into a maelstrom of effects that will sweep over many Oklahoma families as the winter sets in.

 “All these things are happening at the same time,” she said, “That is going to put a lot of people in the position of having to choose between food, medical care or rent. If we continue down this road, we’re going to see rising evictions and homelessness.”

When and if such cuts start hitting in the coming months, don’t expect that the state’s food pantries, homeless shelters, and other aid organizations can keep the blow from landing, Brown said. They are already overstretched. 

“The direct service providers of homeless shelters are doing as much as they can,” Brown said. “But they are at capacity. We can’t continue to rely on nonprofits to pick up the slack when we make these massive cuts.  We’re going to need to find solutions beyond continuing to put more and more on our nonprofit community.”

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