Editor’s note: Since this interview took place, USDA has confirmed that SNAP benefits will continue for November using contingency funds while Congress negotiates a longer-term budget. However, the uncertainty leading up to the announcement caused widespread fear, particularly among disabled and low-income households who cannot stockpile food or absorb gaps in assistance. The core issue remains unchanged: SNAP benefits were already insufficient to cover a full month of food, and millions continue to face hunger even without an official pause in benefits.
When Food Isn’t Guaranteed
Due to the government shutdown and political stalemate over federal funding, millions of SNAP recipients spent October unsure whether they would receive their benefits on time in November. USDA later confirmed that November benefits would go out — but the delayed and conflicting messaging created widespread fear.
My friend Lucy Bell was one of the people caught in that uncertainty.
We met years ago through Invisible People’s Homeless Support Group, bonded as formerly homeless women rebuilding our lives. She lives in Philadelphia now — just her and her two cats — and like millions of others, her monthly food benefits never stretch far enough.
People in Lucy’s community had heard conflicting messages from caseworkers, food pantries, and neighbors and many believed they would not receive benefits at all in November. “Folks I talk with express fear,” she said. “Yesterday, one mother I met was in tears.”
Lucy told me how parents in Philadelphia are sharing information about how they can get abandoned GoPuff orders to feed their kids.
More than two dozen states raised alarms and urged federal action to prevent a lapse in SNAP benefits. At the time of our conversation, many states were publicly warning that November 1 was the likely date by which benefits could be halted unless federal funding was restored.
Food delivery services, such as GoPuff, are offering up to $50 in free groceries to SNAP recipients next month. DoorDash is also delivering meals through food banks and waiving delivery fees for SNAP grocery orders.
In the end, USDA announced that November SNAP benefits would still be issued, but only after weeks of mixed signals. For people living meal-to-meal, that uncertainty was devastating. Most SNAP recipients do not have savings to bridge even a few days without assistance. The fear was real because the stakes were survival.
SNAP Benefits Have Never Been Enough
Lucy said that’s really not enough, and it’s never been enough.
Like many low-income Philadelphians, Lucy relies on dumpster diving and food pantries to get through the second half of every month. Her EBT benefits don’t come close to covering the cost of food. Despite this, she said she’ll be okay.
“I found a deal on bulk lentils and a friend sent me a few staples,” she reassures me. “I just feel for the moms and elderly — and for disabled people who can’t even get to food pantries.”
“The weekly trips to the dumpster and food pantry were routine before the announcement to cut SNAP. There’s always a crowd of hungry people. Mostly elderly. Moms with toddlers. The announcement made things desperate, and it’s not November yet,” she said.
For the 42 million food stamp recipients nationwide, this is their reality — and this is what makes the threat of a lapse so devastating. Like Lucy said, it was never enough to begin with.
The Added Challenges for Disabled SNAP Recipients
One of the most missed and unspoken issues regarding the threatened interruption in SNAP benefits is how disabled people are going to get the food they need.
“Most of the soup kitchens in Philly are not wheelchair accessible,” she said. “I have medically necessary dietary restrictions that pantries almost never are able to meet. Often, the calories burned walking to the pantry exceed the calories disbursed,” Lucy continued. “I have painful arthritis in my spine, feet, hands, and hips from being homeless. It makes the process of foraging for food painful and exhausting.”
Between lack of accessibility, mobility issues, and dietary requirements, being both poor and disabled, and in Lucy’s case, also having lived through homelessness, would make a cut to SNAP benefits life-threatening.
And for Lucy, all of these experiences have been life-threatening, way before the threat of the SNAP freeze.
“I had to give up my anti-inflammatory diet a few years ago because, despite its modest price tag and humble range of ordinary healthy food, I can’t afford it,” said Lucy. “I resigned myself to eating food that causes my joints to swell and burn. I just avoid foods that would send me to the hospital.”
For Lucy, the lack of adequate food stamp benefits means she has to decide, regularly, between eating food that would cause her extreme pain or suffer bone loss and fractures from not eating enough.
“I have bone loss from starving,” she said. “So I have to be mindful to balance eating inflammatory foods and eating anti-inflammatory [foods], but having fractures and bone loss.”
Food as a Human Right? The United States Doesn’t Think So
When we consider the consequences of a SNAP lapse, we have to admit that this is not only harmful to poor people, including children of low-income families, but also to disabled people. The threat of a SNAP funding lapse and the ongoing inadequacy of benefits is classist and ableist, and a clear indicator that the Trump Administration does not believe food is a human right.
If we go back a couple of years, we’d have seen this coming all along. In 2021, the US and Israel were the only countries to vote against the assertion that food is a human right. According to a UN hunger expert, “the US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system in the post-pandemic era and make it more resilient in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.”
This is already a dark road we walk. It’s up to us to secure our right to food, for each other, and for those who really rely on it most, like my dear friend Lucy.