NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: What SNAP Cuts Could Mean for New Yorkers

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Some major disruptions are coming to the nation’s food stamp program, and the results could be devastating not just for SNAP recipients but grocers too. Food retailers say more than half their sales rely on SNAP. Without those funds, they have to cut back on staff and products.

What snap cuts could mean for New Yorkers. From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. Two major disruptions are coming to the nation's food stamp program, and the results, they could be devastating. On Saturday, the Trump administration will stop all SNAP payments because of the ongoing government shutdown. On top of that, there's another change coming to SNAP

that could cut off thousands of New Yorkers from food and assistance long term. WMYCs Joe Hong and Karen Ye are here to break down what this all means for the city. Hey, you two. Hey, Jeney. Hey, Jene. All right. So what exactly is changing beginning this weekend? So starting this weekend, SNAP benefits for the month of November will be on pause unless the Trump administration decides to use contingency funding to keep it going. People get benefits on different days. And so the longer the shutdown goes on, the more and more people who won't have money to spend. So that's the short-term crisis. And then there's also like the long-term more permanent changes to the program. President Trump and congressional Republicans passed their big

domestic policy agenda this summer. And part of that was reshaping SNAP. The changes that they passed extend work rules to more SNAP recipients. Essentially, people have to prove that they're working 80 hours a month consistently or they'll be limited to just three months of benefits in a three-year period. And what all that means is people could start getting kicked off the program by March. And there's always been work rules, but New York City has been exempt from them for a variety of reasons through local and state waivers. But that waiver is ending much, much sooner than expected. Republicans who have pushed for this say the changes are really meant to root out waste, fraud, and abuse and incentivize people to go to work. But studies even from the

USDA, and this is the agency that oversees SNAP, their own studies show that work requirements ultimately lead to people losing their benefits. And if people lose their SNAP benefits, then ultimately they won't be able to afford their groceries. But Karen, this won't just affect those receiving SNAP, right? That's right. It's going to ripple throughout the city. One in five New Yorkers are on SNAP. And SNAP really can only be spent in one kind of place. That's places that sell food, grocery stores and bodegas.

They're the biggest beneficiaries from this. And a lot of them are small businesses. Joe and I traveled up to Mount Haven in the Bronx. This is an area where more than 60% of households are on SNAP. It's the highest in the city. And here we met Marisol Veras, who runs Pioneer supermarket. She told us that the day there's no food stand program, nothing is going to get sold. Because her store is really reliant on SNAP customers.

She told us that if 100 people walk into her store, 85 to 90 of them will pay with SNAP. And other stores told us the same. You know, SNAP makes up anywhere from 50 to 80% of their sales, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. And for these smaller mom-and-pop grocers, they really operate on these razor-thin profit margins. So any sort of dip in revenue could be devastating for them. They rely on volume, how much they can sell quickly to really survive. Yeah, I want to go back to that number. 50 to 80% of sales are, you know, some serious numbers to lose.

what are grocers and food retailers saying, Karen, about what they'll do when these snap changes take effect? They're definitely nervous. Grocers are bracing themselves for what's to come, both in the short term because of the shutdown and sort of the long term with these work rules. Veras, who we met from Pioneer Market, says she's already hitting the brakes on how much she's buying because she's not sure how this will shake out and she doesn't want to have more than she can sell to her customers. We also spoke to more than one grocer who said they would have to seriously consider. closing if lots of their customers can no longer afford to shop there. One of those grocers was Bronx fishmonger, Sergio Hector.

That got us kind of scared because it might put us out of business. He told us that, you know, at least half of his sales are reliant on SNAP customers. He manages this fish market, also in Mont Haven. And he's already seen what happens when people lose their benefits. You know, usually your EBT card, where you have your benefits, get loaded up in the beginning of the month. And so as people spend those dollars and that whittles down, he says his sales dropped by 30%. Let's say it's the beginning of the month, a lot of crab legs, red snapper, like expensive fish. And then when it dies down, they go down to the poggy or whiting the cheaper stuff.

And this is exactly the same number that other grocers told us that sales dropped through the end of the month by 30% when their customers no longer have anything on their cards. And what grocers are telling us that they're considering, as this sort of plays out, is maybe they'll offer more non-perishable goods, things that don't expire as quickly. Others want to focus on staples and produce, things that sell really, really well and maybe cut out the supplies and the items that don't sell as well. But the number one thing that they told us is going to go first is going to be staff. That's where they have the most flexibility. They have to pay their rent. They have to pay the utility bills.

but staff is really where they're considering maybe laying people off. One grocer told me she's already not replacing open jobs as she has. Up next, we zoom out to look at how these snap changes fit into the bigger picture of rising grocery prices across New York City. That's after the break. Welcome back. We're talking about how changes to the federal food stamp program could ripple through New York City's economy and how grocers across the city are bracing for a massive drop in cities. All right, so Joe, this is part of a larger project that you and Karen have been working on about food prices.

So tell me, are grocery prices really going up? Yeah, so we started this project because we felt this sort of shared concern or maybe shared outrage in New York City over high grocery prices. And with inflation, the prices only seem to be getting worse. So we really wanted to take a close look at the supply chains and sort of the logistics behind. running grocery stores to figure out why prices are the way they are. To answer your question, it really kind of depends. So since July, we've been tracking prices at 20 stores across the cities, and we've been looking at the same 11 items each month.

One of the surprising or important findings for this story in particular was that it's not always cheaper to shop in low-income neighborhoods. Just one example of this. Let's take East Tremont, its neighborhood in the Bronx. Child poverty there is about 50%. And then let's say Park Slope in Brooklyn, where child poverty is 9%. There's a store in each of these neighborhoods where buying the 11 items cost the same in October. So let's put the SNAP changes into all of this.

because that means that these changes to SNAP are coming at a time when food insecurity is at a really high rate. So, Joe, you crunch some numbers about how much New Yorkers have come to rely on SNAP. Tell me what you found. Yeah, so the headline is that food insecurity in the city has been on the rise since at least 2018. Maybe slightly more technical way of saying this is that the number of people receiving SNAP benefits in the city, that number is growing. faster than the overall population. The vast majority of neighborhoods in New York have more households on SNAP today than they did in 2018. Some districts have seen huge increases among their food insecure population. Some neighborhoods in Queens in particular have seen up to 60% growth

in the number of households on SNAP. So what do these changes mean for New Yorkers in their communities long term? Yeah, so I should say here that for Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration, the theory behind these changes is that these work requirements for SNAP will encourage people to find stable employment. But sort of the ironic thing is that grocers are also employers. And both experts and grocers told us that in low-income neighborhoods, the grocers who rely on shoppers who are on SNAP may need to lay off employees because they'll be making less profit. Republican lawmakers have also said that these changes are designed to root out abuse and fraud. But Karen mentioned that study conducted by the USDA that found that these more strict rules really only worsen food insecurity. And they don't really help people find employment.

And multiple grocers have also told us that even now that they are dealing with. shoplifting on a daily basis. And there's a concern that when people can't afford food for their kids, that things are going to get even worse. So, you know, rightfully so, there's been a lot of coverage on how these changes to SNAP are going to affect individuals. But if you look at how these changes will affect food ecosystems and communities, you know, I think we're going to see a broader and sort of scaled up impact. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. Janay. Thank you. In response to concerns over SNAP benefits, Governor Kathy Hokel says she's directing millions more to assist food pantries and sending students in a state service program to help at

food banks. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.