The looming end of food benefits will affect an estimated 3 million New Yorkers, including more than 100,000 around Syracuse.
Yvonne Griffin, for example, has a full house that relies on food stamps, through the SNAP benefit program to put food on the table.
“It's myself, my 12-year-old son, my 16-year-old daughter, my 2-year-old grandson, and my 18-year-old daughter, which is my grandson's mother,” she explained.
Griffin said she knew she was losing SNAP benefits weeks prior.
She detailed a recent trip to a grocery store, spending two-thirds of a child support payment on food she doesn’t expect to last much longer than the weekend.
“When the kids get home, they're used to grabbing a pack of noodles. There's something here until dinner is cooked because they come home from school hungry,” Griffin said, “I literally had to sit here and tell them yesterday, 'you guys have to eat all your food at lunch because when you come back here, there might not be nothing here.'”
She works with Citizen Action to lobby the state to make up at least this next month’s worth of SNAP benefits.
Ronald Dennis is also uncertain about where his meals might come from come next week. He described himself as a senior citizen on SSI income who depends on SNAP.
He said he might cancel a trip to visit his sister in order to eat. “I may have to cancel it now because the money that I used to buy the tickets I'm going to have to use it to buy food with. And that's on my credit card," Dennis said.
"So I really don't know what's going to happen,” he worried, “it's not just going to devastate me, but it is going to devastate all New Yorkers."
Dennis said he considers food banks and pantries a last resort. They got an advance of $30 million in state aid to stock up anticipating the November 1 SNAP cancellation.
“The homeless use food pantries. So, with them and the people that do get food stamps, it's going to be a long line,” Dennis said, “and some of them, people on that line are going to be very, very disappointed because they're not going get anything because the food pantries are not real big.”
Both Dennis and Griffin do not expect Congress to act to either end the government shutdown that cancelled SNAP funding, or move to use emergency funds. There are proposals that would just fund SNAP and WIC, one announced Wednesday by Senator Chuck Schumer. But congressional leaders are not expected to bring them up for a vote.
“I know that New York State has $30 billion in reserves,” Griffin said, “and for the governor to go ahead and refill every New York State resident that receives food stamps is going to cost between $650 to $700 million. So [the state] has the money to go ahead and refill our cards for the month of November. She's choosing not to.”
Dennis and Griffin said they hold out hope that help might come from the state level, by emergency action from Governor Kathy Hochul.
