As of March 1, the emergency allotment for individuals and households enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will end in 32 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
That means recipient households will see their monthly grocery allocations reduced by at least $95, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research and policy think tank. In daily terms, that equates to trimming the roughly $9 per-person average to about $6.10. And the change comes when food prices in January were had increased 10% over the same month last year.
Charles Jones, a 63-year-old U.S. military veteran based in Rockford, Illinois, received an enhanced monthly SNAP benefit of $281 under the temporary program. After it ends next week, his payments will plummet to $23 — the minimum monthly amount.
“When they cut this extra benefit from SNAP, that’s going to put me in a serious problem,” he said.
Jones said his pandemic-era SNAP payments helped him move out of a homeless shelter and into a $650-a-month studio apartment earlier this month. He said he’s concerned that when his allotment is slashed — likely because he also receives Social Security disability insurance payments — his rent and utilities will consume all of his income, jeopardizing his new shot at stability.
“It helped me out a lot,” said Jones, who also relies on boxed pantry deliveries but said he often can’t eat much of their contents because of a heart condition. “You know how the government is. They want to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor.”
Stacy Dean, deputy under secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the SNAP program, acknowledged that the emergency benefits had proved “powerful” for recipients.
“That can’t be underscored enough in the difference it’s made in mitigating increases in hunger and addressing economic hardship and poverty,” Dean said. She added that while the program’s expiration “will be very difficult,” the extra aid it delivered “was always designed to be temporary.”
More than 42.3 million people participated in SNAP as of October, the latest period for which federal data was available. Participation hadn’t previously surpassed that level since the summer of 2020. The program’s total cost for fiscal 2021 was $113.68 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. That included nine months of a 15% increase to the maximum benefit as part of the emergency allotments.