NYC NOW - Stricter SNAP Rules Could Push NYC's Most Vulnerable Off Food Assistance

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

A new federal law is making major cuts to SNAP, the program that helps more than 1.8 million New Yorkers afford groceries. WNYC’s Karen Yi reports on how the changes could strip benefits from older adults, low income workers, and others, while shrinking support for hundreds of thousands more.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. Happy Saturday. I'm Jinnate Pierre. President Trump's new tax cut and spending bill will slash funding for programs like SNAP that help New Yorkers afford to get food. Republicans say the measure will eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will primarily benefit the wealthy, leaving the poorest families worse off. SNAP gives low-income families or individuals a monthly debit card to help them buy groceries. But now thousands of people in the city could risk losing their food stamps under pretty drastic changes to the program.

My colleague Karen Ye is here to break it all down for us. And Karen, before we get to the cuts, why don't you tell us who uses SNAP in New York? It's a lot of people. So it's 1.8 million people. And to think about it another way, it's one in five New Yorkers. Or if you're on the subway, someone on your subway train is going to be on SNAP. So older adults, people with disabilities, youth who are aging out of foster care, homeless people, families with kids, also young people starting off in their careers. And all of these people just don't make enough money to buy the food that they need to get them through the month.

And there's also about half a million children who rely on SNAP in the city. So SNAP, as a concept, is supposed to supplement your budget, right? It's called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. And on average, it gives people about $6 a day. and that's really not enough because we know how much food costs in the city. I can barely get a coffee for six bucks. Right.

And this is what people are using to get by in a day. So Peter Gonzalez, he's 59 years old, he told me that he uses this snap sort of as like he kind of cobbles together lots of different sources to just get food through the month. I learned how to stretch it.

You've packed you all together, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I might meet yourself with the snap. And then I work out with the pantries a whole month just to get the ends. And that's really the way a lot of New Yorkers eat with Snap. I mean, they use their EBT cards for some things, like more expensive things, maybe meat or chicken. Then they rely on food pantries to get fresh produce or

vegetables or sometimes canned goods. And then they rely on discount stores. Aldi is a popular one and a favorite one because with the increase in food prices now in inflation, their EBT card just doesn't go as far as it used to. Yeah. You said that a lot of these New Yorkers depend on food pantries. Can you expound on that a bit? Right. So I think this was something that, you know, you think about Snap and then you think about food pantries, but like there's actually a huge overlap among people. So Snap just isn't enough. And so what you're seeing is people in line in the food pantry either don't have SNAP because they don't qualify for it or they do have SNAP, but they need just a little bit more to get them to the end of the month because many families that I spoke to,

they say they go with their EBT card to the supermarket and after one or two visits, there's no more, right? So they need something to get them through to the end. Yeah. So what's going to happen now that Trump signed this sweeping tax measure into law? The way advocates have described it to me, it's almost like it's being attacked on all fronts, all at once, right? And what that means is it can get a little bit wonky and confusing because there's a lot of layers to these cuts. But you can kind of think about it in two general buckets, right? The first bucket is cutting down who can actually get the benefit.

And the other bucket makes states foot the bill for more of the program, which until now has been completely paid for by the federal government. This is the first time that the federal government is saying, nope, it's on states to pay some of the actual benefit for people. And the state says it's going to push some of those costs down to the city, right? So now everyone is paying more for these benefits. And that money, it's got to come from somewhere, right? And so there's going to be really difficult conversations around budget time. Where do we get this money to fund these other programs that we also think are important? Let's focus on that first bucket really quickly.

Who's going to be most affected? I mean, the short answer is everybody, right? So SNAP has always had work requirements, but if you're able-bodied and you can work, you've had to work for your benefits. But it's different in New York. Because New York has such a high unemployment rate, we've actually had an exemption. So if you are a New York City SNAP recipient, you've been eligible for this waiver that says, you know, you don't have to meet these rules. But that is going to end. So part of the cuts is that they're removing that waiver for the state. And that means New Yorkers who are on SNAP, and are able-bodied between the ages of 18 to 54 now have to show documentation to prove that they're working to hold on to their benefits. But the other thing is now more people are added to that list of who has to work. Right. So one is older adults. It's no longer up to 54 years old. You now have to work until you're 65 years old.

So Peter Gonzalez has to get back to work. Exactly. And the other group is parents with kids 14 years or older. Before parents were exempt of their kids were under 18. So if you're still with me, there's a whole universe of people that will now have to meet work rules. The estimate that the city gives me is that's about 250,000 in the city. That includes people like Keisha McAllen. She's 52.

And she is also on SNAP, but she says that it's hard to find a job that really kind of meshes with people's responsibilities, especially to their families or if they have to care for a sick relative or an elderly relative or a child. It's not worth it if individuals may be working and not making the money that will help. take care of their self. You may have family members who are living in the home, who they may have to care for. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about. It's so hard to find work these days. So you're telling me that people might lose their benefits if they can't find work. That's right.

But it's not even that simple, right? Because it's not enough to just have a job. We know that we live in the city, right? There's the gig economy here, the cash economy, the sort of the underground economy, People are working, but the reason I said earlier, you have to show the documentation to prove you are working, that is a big difference, right? So, for example, if you're a driver who works for an app company and you can't show or prove that you have consistent work hours, or if you get paid in cash, or say you're doing, you know, domestic work or caring for an elderly family or relative, like, what is the paperwork, how do you meet the requirements in the letter of the law? You are working, but it's sort of hard to meet those hurdles. And so those people could be at risk of losing their benefits.

So many layers. What else? Okay. So we talked about the work rules. Now there are another 15,000 non-citizens. They're legal immigrants who are refugees, people granted asylum, victims of human trafficking. They are no longer eligible for SNAP. They will lose their benefits. And lastly, SNAP used to pay a little bit of extra and benefits to people who got help with their heating bills. That marriage is ending, which means about 480,000 people will get as much as $200 less a month in SNAP benefits. I spoke to Jerome Nathaniel. He's the, he's sort of overseas policy at City Harvest, which is this food rescue group. And he called this cascade of cuts really unprecedented and catastrophic.

Yeah, I mean, what we saw in the bill is nothing short of a catastrophe. It's the largest cut we've ever seen to the SNAP program at once. And it's really at a scale that food banks aren't designed to really fill. So you can kind of see how it's happening for multiple groups. of people all at once, right? And so you see people that are going to get kicked off, people who will need to meet stricter rules to stay on, and people who are just going to get less money in their pockets every month. Yeah. So what's going to happen once, you know, all of these changes go into effect? I mean, the real worry here is that more people are going to go hungry. There's going to be people who are more food insecure. And we know that there's an affordability crisis

in the city, right? That's all the mayoral candidates are talking about now. People are struggling to pay their rent. People are struggling to pay child care. People are struggling to pay their internet, their phone bill, right? And this is one more thing that they were sort of counting on to sort of patch them through through the end of the month that may no longer be there. So Nancy Perez, she's 50 years old. She says the level of Nietzsche sees right now and her neighbors is pretty dire. And she sort of worries what that will mean once we start to see this wave of cuts start

to roll out. Everyone's talking about you go. I go to the store and sometimes I don't have enough. Sometimes I have to give someone else a couple of dollars at the store because they just don't have it. And the stores, some of them, they're nice and, okay, the dollar don't worry, but some people, they can't afford to let you go for a dollar, 50 cents. There are a whole bunch of Nancy's, I'm sure, across New York City. Now there's a need, but I'm assuming, and Nancy is saying it here,

that with these cuts, there'll be a new level of desperation, right? Exactly. I've visited several food pantries since the pandemic, during the pandemic, and I think, you know, the visual we have of food insecurity, everyone saw the really long lines during COVID, right, of people who had never been food insecure lining up for food. And even though the public health emergency is quote unquote over, right, like that level of need hasn't really abated. I mean, inflation, people just can't afford to live. And so those lines are still there.

As I was walking to this food pantry and Betts die actually passed another one, right, by a church. There was people lined up and people lined up hours before the doors open. And so I think, you know, pantries have talked about this persistent. demand that hasn't really gone away. And, you know, they're barely able to meet the demand. And now they're worried about what's going to happen when you're taking away SNAP or people are losing some of their SNAP benefits. That's going to put even more pressure on food pantries. And one last thing, right, to keep in mind, we're talking about cuts to SNAP, which is one program. This is happening in a universe of cuts to all sorts of safety net programs, right? This bill also cuts Medicaid. We've seen

other federal cuts to programs that help people pay for housing or sort of pay off their rental arrears so that they don't become homeless. They're also cutting education programs that help people eat healthier so they have healthier habits and can sort of be healthier individuals, right? So this safety net that was really holding so many families together is no longer going to do that for people. That's WNYC's Karen Yee. Karen, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Janay. And thank you for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

We'll be back on Monday.