NYC NOW - Food Pantries Brace for More Demand as New SNAP Work Rules Push Thousands Off Benefits

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

At least 22,000 New Yorkers and 31,000 New Jerseyans have been cut from SNAP since new federal work requirements took effect earlier this year. The numbers are expected to grow, and food pantries are already seeing surging demand. WNYC reporter Karen Yi joins Janae with the latest, and what options remain for New Yorkers who've been kicked off the rolls. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images. Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jenaipier. For our pantries, it's once a month. To make up the gap, we would have to serve each person every week, which financially we can't. Food pantries across New York City were already seeing surge in demand before some SNAP recipients got kicked off their monthly food benefits. On today's episode, we look at how the new federal work rules are impacting New Yorkers who depend on SNAP and the local pantries who are trying to. to help them fill their cupboards. But before we get into that, here's what we're watching in our area.

Remember the Safe for Kids Act that the governor signed into law? It's designed to protect children from social media addiction. Starting this January, New Yorkers will need to prove that they're older than 18 before scrolling through their social media feeds. Apps won't be able to send notifications to minors between midnight and 6 in the morning, and children will only have basic feeds. So under 18, your fee can only include accounts that you follow, that you choose. Not sitting there is just a victim of this, all bombardment, that you actually will have a choice of what you see.

People can prove their age with a government-issued ID, but they can also use a face scan, credit card, email address, or phone number. Tech companies did not comment on the unfolding regulations. In transit news, the MTA says it's found a way to speed up subway service by fixing some of the systems, worst bottlenecks. A new report shares solutions for some well-known choke points, like the tracks near DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn. That's where trains need to slow down getting on and off the Manhattan Bridge. MTA officials believe straightening parts of the tracks and upgrading signals nearly a century old could allow trains to run faster. Jamie Torres Springer is the MTA's head of construction. He says underground intersections where trains share tracks can cause some major delays.

It's what allows us to move trains around the system in such a fluid way where they separate and combine again. And at some of those intersections, maybe the roadway isn't designed as efficiently as it should be. The MTA identified 25 locations that the agency could untangle. There's no price tag on the potential project just yet. Now let's get to New Jersey. Public health researchers are raising alarms over what they say, is a brain health emergency in Newark. Researchers at Rutgers University

conducted memory screenings for 160 black residents. It found that two-thirds of those screens showed more severe mental decline than expected and half showed signs of dementia. Mark Gluck is a neuroscientist at Rutgers who leads the program. He says the people being screened are largely socially isolated

and live in public or subsidized housing. They literally dement in place. They develop dementia alone in place. until it's really just the housing authority that has to deal with it when they're no longer able to live alone there. Essex County has the 10th highest prevalence of Alzheimer's of any county in the nation.

Several studies show black people are twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's than the rest of the population. We're going to take a quick break, but when we return, we'll get an update on how things are going for thousands of New Yorkers who have lost their SNAP benefits.

And the food pantries, working the health team. That's a hit, so stick around. At least 22,000 New Yorkers and 31,000 New Jerseyans have been kicked off their monthly food benefits since new federal work rules took effect earlier this year. In New York City, the program known as SNAP feeds 1.7 million people. City officials say thousands more beneficiaries are expected to be knocked off the rolls, putting even more strain on food pantries already seeing surging demand. And WMIC reporter Karen Yee has been all over this story and she joins us to bring us up to date on what's happening. Hey, Karen.

Hey, Jeney. So we had you on the show just before the first New Yorkers began losing their SNAP benefits. And you mentioned something really interesting about who exactly is being affected by these work changes. Can you walk us through that again? That's right. Last time we spoke about this, I had raised the finding that the city shared with me, which was unexceptive. expected, which is that the people who are most being affected by these work rules and at risk of being kicked off was actually young adults, people 18 to 35 years old. And now that we have this

sort of first month of numbers of who actually has lost their benefits, that's what we see that that's true, right? 63% of those with closed cases are between 18 to 35 years old. Forty-four percent are actually single men. And the way that the city explains this, I mean, they're still kind of of looking into the numbers is that this is a group of New Yorkers that aren't easily exempted, right? They don't have a medical condition. Maybe they're healthier. They might not have a disability. So part of it is a communication gap. And part of it is they might not be eligible for these exemptions. What we also know is that about 42 of the closed cases were in Brooklyn. So that's the hardest hit borough and 26% were in the Bronx. Yeah. And again, some really surprising numbers,

at least for myself, I mean, when you first told me that those most affected were young adults, I was just like, wow, I was really thinking it would be older New Yorkers, you know. But now, what do SNAP recipients have to do under the new federal requirements? People have to prove that they're either working, volunteering, or in school to keep the benefits for more than three months. And these are rules that began back in March. So the three-month grace period ran out in June, which is why, we're starting to see these numbers of how many Yorkers are starting to get kicked off. And so the city kind of expects this number to grow.

And just to give you a bit of context, I mean, Snap is what's known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It's a federal entitlement program that goes all the way back to the Great Depression. And there's always been some sort of work requirement, but New York has had a waiver for a really long time. Just because we have a high unemployment rate. But last summer, congressional Republicans passed through a measure that was signed by President Trump to expand who had to submit to these work rules and kind of rescind this waiver that New York and other states had. So now suddenly New Yorkers found themselves maybe for the first time ever having not just to maybe go back to work, but prove consistently every month that they are working. And the idea, you know, what the congressional Republicans have said is like the idea is to encourage people to go back to work and cut out fraud. But food advocates and city officials have been very, very loud in saying, no, what this is going to do is just kind of push people off their benefits.

People are working, but sometimes it's not consistent. Or they can't always prove it. If you think of like a home health aid, their patient goes to the hospital, they're not working for those weeks. It's not that they're not employed. It's just that's the nature of their job. And, you know, at the end of the day, we're talking about a benefit that isn't that much. It's an average of $6 a day, $187 a month. So for some families, they might be making them.

that calculation. Maybe I have child care duties. Maybe I have to take care of a sick relative or parent. Is it really worth it to jump through all these hoops to be able to hold on to that $6 a day? You know, Karen, I was recently riding around in my neighborhood in Bedstuy, and I rode past a food pantry. When I tell you the line was like down the block and around the corner, I'm wondering, you know, with these changes, what will this mean for food pantry? in the city. Yeah, I think what you see is what, you know, many New Yorkers see or maybe are having to say online themselves. And what I'm hearing from pantries, even before we started seeing these SNAP rules take effect, is that they were already seeing demand this year. You know, we've had rising gas prices because of the war in Iran, and that pushes up transportation costs, which pushes up food prices. And you have all of the other affordability issues like housing, child care, that's kind of squeezing New Yorkers. So status quo, demand is.

high. And now you're adding more people who may be losing these benefits. And so a lot of the reasons that pantries are seeing even longer lines really have nothing to do with the work rules just yet. In the summer in particular, there is a spike because schools are closed and schools offer free meals. So kids maybe are home. They are hungry. They need to eat. Gas prices are still high. And for now, food pantries tell me that they have enough. They have enough to feed and sort of meet this demand, but they're bracing for more people and more need in the coming months. I visited a food pantry in the South Bronx that's run by this group called United Bronx Parents, and it's part of the Acacia Network.

Please have your ID ready. If you're not ready, we'll pass you by. So they opened their doors at 10, and I got there a little bit before 10, and I was walking and I knew exactly where it was because there was just a long line down the block. And this was a very, very hot day, like temps in the 90 degrees. People were standing under umbrellas for shade and sort of fanning themselves of what they could. And at first I thought the line just went down the street. And, you know, that wasn't too bad compared to other places I've seen.

But then I learned that there are cones on different avenues and streets that mark the next hundred people. So only 100 people line line actually stretched down the block, down the avenue, down two more blocks. When it's good weather, they're here at four in the morning because normally they tend to know what we're giving out because they see people communicate amongst each other when they're passing by and we're getting our trucks. And they know there's chicken here. We have milk. We have chicken, yogurt. Christian Estrada, he runs the pantry. He actually told me that he used to live on the same block as a kid and used to come to this pantry.

And then he took overrunning it in 2007. You might hear in other pantries where there's issues of violence, violence, all that. I've been doing this since 07 and I've had only one fight. Estrada tells me that he serves about 500 families a day and he has a system. I mean, he runs a pretty, pretty tight ship. He doesn't let anyone save spots online

just to avoid fights. He knows who's coming. He knows everyone by face and who's new. You know, because he's just, he's there three days a week and he knows these people for many, many years now. So we pick up people's IDs to verify who they are. And I picked up, I think about 120, 200, to 130 IDs, there's probably two or three new faces only.

That's not really a lot of new faces, is it, Karen? That's what he said. I mean, when he was going through the IDs, he would maybe point out, like, one or two new people. And I think that shows that demand isn't quite there yet. I did visit this pantry, and I met Christian in June. And so this was the first month, right, where snap cases were beginning to close. So I think there's that expectation that, like, as people lose their benefits, we're going

to start seeing more new faces at pantries or people patching together even more pantries to make ends meet. What Acacia Network told me is that one of the soup kitchens they run, they've already seen double the number of people they serve compared to last year. You know, many of them are working, but it's just not enough to feed their kids. I met Carla Flores, who says she has two boys. They're 12 and 17 years old, and they just eat a lot. And they're just growing teens, and they're just growing teens, and they just need a lot more food that she can afford. And she is working as a home attendant, but it's just not enough.

I see, something we get them. Yeah, no, no, no, no, it's the important is that we get them to. I met her on her day of work, and it was a Friday, and she had been waiting about two and a half hours in the line, but she says it was worth it just to be able to take something home, even if there's not much left. I also spoke to Lakeisha Morris. She heads food and housing programs at Catholic Charities.

They run a couple of pantries across the city, and she's worried that things are going to escalate by fall. We haven't seen the height of this just yet. She says there's just no way that food pantries can really make up the gap for what SNAP provides. No, we can't. Because, again, for our pantries, it's once a month. Yes, I see.

Right? To make up the gap, we would have to serve each person every week, which financially we can't. For every meal a pantry gives, SNAP provides nine meals. Morris says that now pantries are starting to have very hard conversations about what this will mean. Maybe, you know, they'll have to offer fewer meals to people who come to their doors, because the last thing anyone wants to do is turn people away who have been waiting hours and hours. in the line for something to eat. Yeah.

You know, Karen, kind of switching gears here. I also wanted to ask about some other local reporting from the city reporter. They did an investigation on EBT fraud in the city and found that EBT cards are the target of organized transnational crime rings. You know, I'm thinking between that, the cost of living crisis and changes in SNAP work rules. I'm just wondering, you know, what other avenues do New Yorkers have to get help affording food for their families? It's a hard question because SNAP is such a, you know, 1.7 million New Yorkers rely on SNAP. It is, it makes up such a large gap of people's

monthly food budget. I did speak to Aaron Dalton. She's the commissioner of the city's Department of Social Services and they kind of oversee eligibility for the city. I spoke to her during a live event that WNYC held around food affordability in July. And her message was clear. Help is still here. She said, please call us. If you've been kicked off your benefits, it's not over. We can still help you. I mean, really, you should just call us, right? So the AccessHRA app, which actually is a pretty good app given for government, right? And hopefully those 18 and young, you know, those young adults are using that app. But I think the most important thing we can ask is it's never too late. Even for those 22,000. They can call us back. We can work with them. She did urge communities and New Yorkers to

really make it clear to their elected officials how this is affecting them. You know, she called it like make your pain note. That's what she told me. Because what her point was, as easily as these changes were made under this tax and spending plan passed by Republicans last year, they can just as easily be undone by Congress. That's true. That's WMYC's Karen Yee. Thanks a lot, Karen. Thanks, Jane. And thank you for listening to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. See you next time.