The federal government is pulling funding from Black mental health programs. Here’s what we’re losing.
Let me be clear about something: the mental health system was not built for us. It never was. And the community organizations that filled that gap — the ones led by people who look like us, who speak our language, who understand that our healing lives at the intersection of housing, food, safety, and soul — those programs are now being defunded.
In California alone, the Community Responsive Wellness Program delivered more than 13,000 services to more than 2,700 residents between 2024 and 2025 — many of whom had never accessed mental health services before. These weren’t clinical waiting rooms with six-week intake paperwork. These were people embedded in neighborhoods, picking up desperate calls from mothers sleeping in bus stations with six children. And within hours, that network had the family in a hotel, their kids back in school, and every family member connected to care.
That’s what community-centered healing looks like. That’s what we built. And that’s what Trump-era funding cuts are dismantling.
Black people make up 7% of the general population but 26% of Californians experiencing homelessness — an inequity rooted in decades of discriminatory housing policies, over-policing, and inadequate access to culturally responsive care. This is not an accident. It is architecture. And the response to it — these community models that treat mental health as inseparable from housing, food, and belonging — is exactly what is being stripped away.
The Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM) still stands. They train community leaders, therapists, teachers, barbers, and medical professionals to apply healing justice–informed strategies that support people in mental health crisis while building community-based systems of care. They are doing the work. But they cannot do it alone and they cannot do it without resources.
Here’s what Zora wants you to take away: your healing is political. When systems fail our people, our people build new ones. Support the organizations still fighting — BEAM, Therapy for Black Girls, Black Men Heal. Learn their names. Share their work. Donate when you can.
Because they came for our programs. And our response has to be louder than silence.
Source: CalMatters / BEAM Tags: #BlackMentalHealth #HealingJustice #PurposelyAwakened #TheAwakened #CommunityHealing
