CHICAGO — Nonprofits working with Chicagoans in recovery for substance abuse are concerned some programs may fade or shut down after the Trump administration abruptly slashed federal grants for public health.

In the crosshairs of the cuts is $1 billion from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to combat record-setting overdose deaths and a surge in mental health diagnoses since the pandemic. Up to $28 million that had been earmarked for 77 community organizations in Illinois will be terminated, according to a Wednesday statement from the Illinois Department of Human Services.

“At this time, due to the uncertainty of the future availability of these federal grant funds, we are alerting you that federal funding and related service reductions are likely,” state officials wrote in an email to nonprofit providers reviewed by Block Club. “We do not know what the full impact to your agency is currently and are working as quickly as possible to mitigate the impact of this decision.”

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement to The New York Times , “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Haymarket Center, a nonprofit that supports up to 5,000 Chicagoans a year dealing with substance use and mental health challenges, stands to lose a quarter of its overall funding, President Dan Lusting said.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grants were backing Haymarket’s four “recovery homes,” which offer a “structured environment” for people re-entering society after completing residential treatment, Lustig said. Recovery homes provide connections to jobs, benefits, continued mental health services and a local support system, Lustig said.

“When programs like this disappear, people will often relapse without structure, so they access emergency services and emergency rooms, which ends up only increasing costs,” Lustig said. “We’re supposed to be a relief valve to larger institutions, especially with treating the hard-to-reach populations.”

Chelsea Laliberte Barnes, co-chair of the Illinois Harm Reduction & Recovery Coalition, said nonprofits are still “reeling to figure out” how the sudden cuts could immediately impact services, like providing people with rides to treatment programs or Narcan, a life-saving overdose-reversing medication.

Cook County saw the fewest opioid overdose deaths in nearly a decade last year as outreach efforts expanded amid record-breaking death tolls in the years following the pandemic .

“When the pandemic forced us inside, it disrupted our connections with people, and we’ve been doing the work to rebuild those connections. It’s an entire field based on trust,” Barnes said. “It’s easy for [the Trump administration] to do this when they’re not on the ground every day.”

Alexa James, chief executive officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago , said the funding cut is part of a “continued decimation of safety-net services” and an “assault on our nonprofit sector.”

“It’s going to hit organizations trying to gap-fill mental health services,” James said. “I think about it as anything Medicaid may not be paying for, like public education and no-barrier or low-barrier access to mental health services.”

Federal funds were also used to expand programs that send outreach professionals to mental health crises as an alternative to calling law enforcement, James said.

“In many ways, we expected volatility, but we didn’t expect this administration to spend so much time looking backwards,” James said. “For people on our staff who do this work because they’re mission-aligned, this feels really gutting.”

Lustig said Haymarket staffers are trying to patch together lost federal funds through donations and other sources to avoid closing programs.

State officials wrote in their email that they are considering legal challenges and have “requested guidance” from federal agencies about “reimbursement for work completed prior to the notice of termination.”

“There’s a level of frustration, but there’s also a lot of fear about where the next cut is going to come from,” Lustig said. “There’s no blueprint. Each day is a new day.”