The Human Toll of the Suspension of SNAP
Angel Goodwin used to work remotely, processing applications for Medicaid and for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. People would sometimes yell at her over the phone—“I’ve been called every name but a child of God,” she said—but it was worse when they cried. “Especially the elderly. They would be approved for, like, thirty dollars a month, and they’re getting Social Security for, like, nine hundred and forty-three dollars. They’d be, like, ‘Honey, I can’t—I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t have anybody.’ ” Goodwin, a single mother with an eleven-year-old son, also received SNAP benefits. “Little do they know I’m in the same boat,” she said.
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Earlier this year, Goodwin began to feel pain shooting down from her shoulder, most likely a consequence of repetitive computer work. At the beginning of October, she took a short-term disability leave. Then, toward the end of the month, she logged in to her SNAP account and saw an alarming notification: November benefits weren’t coming. She and her son had already scaled back to subsist on the short-term disability benefits, which were “not very much at all,” she said. Now they’d have to make do with less, even as food prices seemed to get higher every week. “Personally, my faith will always outweigh my fear,” she said. “But it’s at a scary point now.”
Amid the prolonged government shutdown, which is now the longest in American history, SNAP benefits have become a political football. In previous shutdowns, emergency funds have been used to cover the program, which serves around forty-two million Americans. But the Trump Administration has declined to do so. A number of states have stepped in to cover the gap, or to provide additional money to food banks; Texas, which has a multibillion-dollar rainy-day fund, has done neither. (H-E-B, the grocery-store chain which arguably serves as a second layer of social services in the state, has donated six million dollars to food banks.) At the end of October, a federal judge ordered the Administration to continue SNAP payments. But, several days later, there was nothing in Goodwin’s SNAP account; the Administration has said that November payments will be only partial, and it’s unclear when the funds will arrive.
Goodwin, who grew up in South Carolina, had what she describes as “a pretty rough childhood.” In her early twenties, she cut ties with her family, and found herself with a young child and no real support system. She slept on friends’ couches and then, when she felt her welcome wearing out, in her car. Being homeless was tolerable—“You meet cool people on the streets, people with wisdom,” she said—but she wanted her son to have a more stable life. She got a job working the night shift at a gas station, and earned enough money to move into a hotel where she paid by the week. It took two years to save up enough to cover a deposit to rent a small apartment. “I didn’t have any furniture—no couch or anything like that, just a couple of pans that I’d had in the hotel,” she said. “We pretty much slept on the floor. We literally started from zero.” When she felt overwhelmed, she prayed to God for guidance. She began having dreams about Texas, the state’s outline popping up in unexpected places. In her journal, she asked God if this was really what he wanted her to do— she’d never left South Carolina before. Yes was the answer she received, so she began researching apartments online. By now, she was working remotely as a customer-service representative for a bank, but she’d need more money to fund the move. On YouTube, she learned about retail arbitrage—essentially, buying discounted items in bulk and then reselling them on Amazon at a markup. The scheme eventually stopped working, but by then she’d saved up enough money to cover the deposit on an apartment in Houston. Two years ago, she moved into a renovated two-bedroom with pale-gray walls and a bright, narrow kitchen. Her days were taken up with work and with homeschooling her son.
On the morning of November 3rd, day three of no SNAP, Goodwin put her son in the car and drove twenty-five minutes to the West Houston Assistance Ministries, a nonprofit social-services organization, which was hosting a special food-distribution event for SNAP recipients. When she arrived, at around 9 A.M., a line of cars snaked down the block, and volunteers in neon vests directed traffic. Nationwide, fourteen per cent of households are considered food-insecure. In Harris County, which comprises Houston, the figure is close to forty per cent. WHAM had seen a notable uptick in need since the shutdown began, on October 1st. “We’ve been focussed on food, but we’ve also seen an increase in evictions—it’s a crisis on top of a crisis,” Neysa Gavion, a social worker and a senior case manager at WHAM, told me. “And the interesting thing is, while we’ve always had people at the poverty line or below, this is the middle class.” Recently, the organization had provided assistance to an I.R.S. employee and single mother who was days from being evicted. “People that weren’t impacted before are being impacted now,” Gavion said. A retired woman waiting in line told me that she had contemplated growing her own food. “I got a little balcony. Maybe I can grow some beans?” she said.
A sound system played nineties country and sixties pop as another group of volunteers carried crates of milk out of the sun. Under a blue shade tent, a woman named Destaney handed out information about food banks and assistance programs. Destaney works at WHAM a few days a week as part of her coursework at community college, where she’s studying to be a paralegal. In class, all anyone wanted to talk about was politics, ICE apprehensions, and the shutdown. “At first it didn’t affect me directly, but I get food stamps, too,” she said. “Today, when I woke up and I didn’t get them, I’m, like, O.K., this is really real.”
Goodwin’s car inched forward until she reached the front of the line. She popped her trunk and a volunteer placed a box inside. Another volunteer offered Goodwin a bouquet of flowers that still had a day or two of life in them. Goodwin, surprised, thanked her effusively. When she got back to her apartment, she sent her son into the other room to resume his lesson—he was learning about phytoplankton—as she surveyed the box’s contents: a bag of grapes, some chicken, a can of SpaghettiOs, a gallon of milk. “He loves SpaghettiOs, so that will be his school lunch,” Goodwin said. She had a small stockpile of dried beans, rice, and canned vegetables, some of it from other food banks. “I’ll make it work. There are recipes on YouTube. Or you just put random ingredients into ChatGPT,” she said. The other day she’d made a slow-cooked stew with green beans and turkey legs which she’d served over rice. It had looked (and tasted) good enough that she’d taken a video of it bubbling on the stove. “Everything but the turkey legs came from the food bank,” she said.
Online, people were saying that a judge had told President Trump that he’d have to release SNAP funds, but Goodwin wasn’t putting too much stock into that. “It’s just so hard to tell. I think it may start up again in December, or maybe something supplemental will happen. Honestly, to be completely transparent with you, I try not to put my faith in the system,” she said. In the meantime, when she got overwhelmed, she asked ChatGPT for help. “I just say, ‘I’m feeling really frustrated now. Please give me some tools to calm my mind.’ ” ♦
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Rachel Monroe is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where she covers Texas and the Southwest. She is the author of “Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession.”
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