FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 5, 2026
Contact: media@communitychange.org
New Battleground State Focus Groups on Affordability Crisis Reveals Residents Squeezed on Prices, Wages, and Benefits Access
Focus group participants blame corporate greed for the cost of living crisis and they want the government to take bold and swift action to address the crisis.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Community Change convened dozens of residents and surveyed hundreds more from Nebraska, Nevada, Wisconsin, New York, and Michigan over the last two months for focus groups examining how the affordability crisis is impacting families across the country and the solutions they want policymakers to prioritize. Participants represented diverse backgrounds, including working parents, seniors, young workers, people of color, rural and urban residents.
Key Takeaway: Across geography, race, ethnicity, and gender, participants agreed that they are being squeezed from three sides: (1) the prices for basic essentials like healthcare, food, and gas are no longer affordable, (2) wages from work have stagnated and are not keeping up with rising prices; and (3) there are tremendous barriers to accessing public benefits that are supposed to help people make ends meet. People blame the cost of living crisis on a system that gives big corporations and the wealthy too much power. They want the government to take bold and swift action to address the crisis.
CORE THEMES FROM FOCUS GROUPS
1. Wages Haven’t Kept Pace with Costs
Across every location, participants converged on a clear narrative: wages have stagnated or declined in real terms while the cost of essentials — housing, healthcare, food, gas, utilities — has risen sharply. The problem isn’t just low pay; it’s that the entire wage system no longer matches the actual cost of living, leaving even workers with “good jobs” and multiple income streams unable to save, plan, or weather emergencies.
- Participant from MI-07: “It took me 2 years to find a job that pays about half of what I earned before. I earned more 40 years ago”
- Participant from NV-03: “My rent is $2000. I cannot meet that rent without help from my mom. I don’t make that kind of money. It’s pretty dire.”
- Participant from NY-08: “You get $15 an hour, but you still can’t see anything because it is eaten up by every little entity, the gas price, the phone, the this, the rent. So we are back to square one as soon as you get an increase in wages.”
2. Housing Costs Are Forcing Impossible Choices
Across every single location, participants made clear that housing costs aren’t just a line item — they’re forcing impossible trade-offs: food or rent, medicine or rent, safety or rent, dignity or rent. And several participants explicitly noted that even small raises at work can backfire when public benefits get clawed back, meaning working harder often doesn’t translate into housing stability.
- Participant from WI-01: “I decided that I will pay more in rent so that I can be safe. But because I’ve done that and made that choice, that means that I have to scale back on what I eat, because I don’t have enough money to make it through to the end of the month, because I feel like my safety is worth more. I don’t always get to eat at all… And I take a thyroid medicine, but there have been months where I’ll go without it.”
3. Healthcare and Childcare Are Out of Reach
Across every location, participants described being unable to keep up with healthcare and childcare costs even when they had jobs and insurance. Participants described having to give up prescribed physical therapy, thyroid medications, and pick-and-choose which treatments to get based on the bill they’d get. Another sold household items on eBay and worked extra hours to help pay for groceries and utility bills because childcare and medical debt consumed her wages. Parents reported being forced to depend on aging relatives for childcare.
Their struggles were made worse by a benefit cliff that punishes earning more. One participant explained that if her reported income went just a couple dollars over the threshold, her SNAP and Medicaid could be cut.
- Participant from WI-01 with cancer: “Every month when I get [a bill], I’m always poring through it, trying to find the part where it’s like, well, what do I… or what am I gonna get a bill for? But the prescriptions, if I can go without something, I will, but that just creates another problem further down the line for me, that’s gonna make things even worse. So it’s kind of like a juggling game. It’s kind of like, you know, putting all the plates in the air and trying to keep them all up as long as you can.”
- Participant from NY-08: “And, with visiting doctors, copays are extremely high. So you think double of what is more important: the bills that we have to pay for or the visit I really need. I stopped going for physical therapy. I’m having some issues. I’m actually in extreme pain…What matters most? Health? Food? Rent? Bills?”
4. Make Public Benefits Easier to Access
What Participants Said: The most consistent proposed fix was expanding benefits and cutting red tape through universal programs — universal healthcare, universal childcare, affordable housing for all — alongside simplifying the systems that remain.
Sample of specific solutions:
- Address administrative burdens, including: Clearer eligibility information from the hotlines, fewer documentation requirements, simpler navigation of the system
- Protection from benefit cliffs, including: Longer income phaseouts so that those making just a few dollars over the threshold don’t have to choose between losing access to life-saving programs or keeping their job
- Expanding what benefits cover and who has access. For example, including Medicaid coverage for medically-necessary items like health supplements. And remove requirements to access funds that keep unhoused people from getting the support they need
- Require landlords to accept housing vouchers and support those who do with funds that can go to proper and safe upkeep of the properties
5. Government Should Prioritize People Over Corporations
Across nearly every lab, participants named corporations, billionaires, and a corrupt political system as root causes for the cost of living crisis. Participants agreed that we have to redistribute wealth and power from billionaires and big businesses to ordinary people.
- Participant from NV-03: “The corporations have a hand in this crisis. Billionaires have a lot of control over the government. The folks at the top, billionaires and government, they all stick together.”
- Participant from MI-07: “[Our country] cares more about corporations than real people. It all goes back to the Reagan era. Federal programs meant to make life affordable are gone. Conservative policies are to blame.”
- Participant from NY-08: “I feel like big business definitely has a big hand in the affordability crisis, because even when we look at what types of housing is being built and developed, the developers multi-million dollar developers…since everything is based around capitalism, since everything is based around making a profit, when they’re building housing, when the housing that they’re building is market rate, it’s extremely expensive.”
PARTICIPANT IDEAS FOR SOLUTIONS
In addition to sharing their experiences with lack of affordability, participants shared ideas for solutions they want leaders to implement.
1. Raise Wages and Create Good Jobs
What Participants Said: participants proposed living wages, job-readiness support, and stabilizing jobs against tech-driven churn. They shared that finding and keeping stable jobs requires a reimagination of our transportation systems. And they proposed investing more in care workers and integrating job-creation programs with childcare.
Sample of their solutions:
- Living wages as a baseline
- Prioritize human needs and skillsets over artificial intelligence
- More programs to help people get good jobs, including job-readiness support
- Expand the workforce in key occupations like community health workers as both a jobs program and a bridge to care
2. Expand Access to Affordable Housing
What Participants Said: Participants called for government action to immediately build housing for low-income people and the unhoused and to control rapidly escalating rents.
Sample of their solutions:
- Create innovations for incorporated and transitional or supportive housing. Including converting unused infrastructure into housing to give people stability so they can plan, or building multi-generational spaces that include both affordable living for seniors and childcare centers
- Repurpose unused land to build more low-income housing
- Housing First for the unhoused — provide housing without strings attached, because an imperfect recovery process can trip the strings and exacerbate instability, creating a cycle that’s hard to get out of.
- Limit landlord profits so rent stops rising once a profit threshold is met
3. Make Healthcare and Childcare Universal and Affordable
What Participants Said: The solutions to childcare and healthcare involved expansion in government support for families to access care directly or via insurance, controlling costs, investing in the care workforce, and building the infrastructure needed to expand the delivery of care.
Sample of specific solutions:
- Phase in Medicare expansion. Start by covering everyone under 26 and over 50, then scale to all.
- Cap healthcare costs and out-of-pocket spending; establish maximum limits to copays, and reevaluate what counts towards insurance deductibles
- Fully fund both childcare, elder, and dependent care to: (a) provide well-rounded care access, (b) reduce caretaker stress, (c) enable women to enter the workforce, (d) free up family time, (e) raise wages in care-taking roles, and (f) end the “sandwich generation” squeeze
4. Make Public Benefits Easier to Access
What Participants Said: The most consistent proposed fix was expanding benefits and cutting red tape through universal programs — universal healthcare, universal childcare, affordable housing for all — alongside simplifying the systems that remain.
Sample of specific solutions:
- Address administrative burdens, including: Clearer eligibility information from the hotlines, fewer documentation requirements, simpler navigation of the system
- Protection from benefit cliffs, including: Longer income phaseouts so that those making just a few dollars over the threshold don’t have to choose between losing access to life-saving programs or keeping their job
- Expanding what benefits cover and who has access. For example, including Medicaid coverage for medically-necessary items like health supplements. And remove requirements to access funds that keep unhoused people from getting the support they need
- Require landlords to accept housing vouchers and support those who do with funds that can go to proper and safe upkeep of the properties
METHODOLOGY
NE-02
Community Change surveyed 38 people and conducted a focus group session on July 7th over Zoom. Participants included 5 Nebraska residents with representation from across Omaha and greater Douglas County. This session was 90 minutes in duration and was facilitated by Chirag Mehta.
MI-07
Community Change surveyed 77 people and conducted 3 focus group sessions on July 21st and 22nd, and September 29th over Zoom. Participants included 11 Michigan residents aged 60-20 years old, with representation from around Lansing, and all of Clinton, Shiawassee, Ingham, and Livingston counties, as well as portions of Eaton, Genesee, and Oakland counties, indigenous, Black, and white communities. Sessions lasted 90 minutes and were facilitated by Ana Fabregas and Chirag Mehta.
WI-01
Community Change surveyed 60 people and conducted 2 focus group sessions on August 25th and 26th over Zoom. Participants included 3 Wisconsin residents ages 44-69, with representation from across southeastern Wisconsin, including Kenosha County, Racine County, and most of Walworth County, as well as portions of Rock County and Milwaukee County. Sessions lasted 90 minutes and were facilitated by Ana Fabregas and Chirag Mehta.
NV-03
Community Change surveyed 71 people and conducted 3 focus group sessions on September 9th and 10th over Zoom. Participants included 9 Nevada residents ages 40-75, with representation from southern Las Vegas and much of unincorporated Clark County, Black, white, Latino, and Hawaiian communities. Sessions lasted 90 minutes and were facilitated by Ana Fabregas and Chirag Mehta.
NY-08
Community Change surveyed 52 people and conducted 1 focus group session on September 30 over Zoom. Participants included 6 New York residents ages 29-68, with representation from New York City. The session lasted 90 minutes and was facilitated by Chirag Mehta and Ana Fabregas.
Community Change Priorities on Affordability Crisis
It’s important to note that many of the affordability issues discussed above were made worse in the last year by the implementation of OBBBA – with the worst impacts particularly around Medicaid cuts and SNAP restrictions still to come.
A systemic dismantling of our safety net alongside rising costs and stagnant wages begs a transformation of our economy. To not just beat this affordability crisis, but thrive, Community Change is fighting for:
- A transformed childcare and healthcare system built on racial and gender justice, with thriving wages for the care workforce, and affordable for everyone.
- Permanent no-strings-attached guaranteed income programs at all levels of government to give people the agency and power to make decisions about their lives free from coercion.
- An immigrant-inclusive democracy with basic social and economic protections for us all, regardless of immigration status, where immigrants can legalize their status and have abundant opportunities to become U.S. residents and citizens—free to fully participate in the communities they call home.
- Fairer tax systems where big businesses and the wealthy pay their fair share to foster a society where ordinary people have genuine power to shape the conditions of their lives and are free to thrive.
ABOUT COMMUNITY CHANGE
Community Change’s north star is poverty abolition. We nurture grassroots movements among Black, brown, immigrant and low-income communities—building state and local power to shape policy and politics at all levels of government. Alongside over 150 grassroots partner groups across 40+ states and tens of thousands of advocates not connected to any organization, we are fighting to abolish poverty by dramatically shifting our country’s power imbalance to build a just economy where we all have the freedom to thrive.
