Many in Somerville found themselves among the roughly 1.1 million Massachusetts residents who were left in limbo when a federal government shutdown delayed the distribution of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. The federal program provides monthly assistance to low-income individuals and families to help them purchase groceries.
SNAP benefits were restored to Massachusetts residents on Nov. 8 after Gov. Maura Healey ordered the release of state funds, but the rollout varied. While recipients nationwide have since received their November benefits, many may soon lose assistance under new federal requirements introduced in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
This combination of shifting policies and unexpected delays in SNAP payments has created uncertainty for organizations and residents alike.
“[SNAP recipients] just don’t really know what to expect,” CEO of the Mystic Valley YMCA, Debbie Amaral said. “So there’s a lot of anxiety around it, and there’s a lot of changes that were already coming up.”
For some recipients, the delay worsened already precarious circumstances. Lori Staknis, a Somerville resident living at St. Patrick’s Shelter, said SNAP is essential to her survival. “To be honest, I would absolutely starve without it,” she said.
When she first learned benefits would not arrive on time, she worried. “I was like ‘What the hell am I gonna do? How am I gonna eat?’ I mean, it’s scary as hell,” she said.
Staknis received her benefits on Nov. 11 and considered herself “lucky” to have waited only a few days. Other recipients had more difficult experiences. Staknis said her friend Kayla, a mother and SNAP recipient, filled a cart at Stop & Shop only to learn at checkout that her EBT balance had been frozen.
“She had a whole cart of food and felt like an idiot,” Staknis said, adding that several other recipients she knows experienced similar situations.
During the delay, Staknis said many people had little to eat. “[The shelter] only serves one meal a day,” she said, noting that she and others traveled between shelters “all day long” to find food.
Even then, she described the community response as amazing, citing pop-up pantries and neighbors offering food through Facebook.
Courtney Foster, a Fletcher alum working at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, was among residents who used Somerville Facebook groups and food pantry donations to assist SNAP recipients during the surge in need.
“[There’s been] a huge flood of [Facebook] posts of people being concerned and trying to redistribute food,” she said.
Matthew Caughey, executive director of the Elizabeth Peabody House, a Somerville-based non-profit, said their food pantry has seen an outpouring of community support. Along with increased donations, more than 30 people submitted volunteer interest forms during the delays — more than the organization was even prepared to manage.
“We’ve been very fortunate that the community has rallied,” he said. “There’s a ton of goodwill in the community that’s coming to our door.”
Food pantries became a critical resource as recipients waited for benefits to arrive. Caughey said the early November surge at EPH outpaced anything the organization had seen in recent years.
“[In one week] we served almost 450 households. … That’s a near 30% increase [from] the two weeks before,” he said.
In one day alone, the pantry served 175 people within five hours, according to Caughey.
“A lot of people … I talked to were like, ‘I’ve never been in this position before,’” Caughey said. “People were navigating a system that was very uncertain.”
The Mystic Valley YMCA, which runs several food distribution sites including the Mystic Community Market, also reported increased demand. Amaral said they serve about 2,000 households a week and saw roughly a 10% rise during the delay.
Although local donors and volunteers stepped up, Amaral contrasted this response with federal action during earlier crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government played a larger role in supporting SNAP. This time, she said, “the federal government’s talking about clawing money back … so it’s a very different response that we’re getting.”
Parke Wilde, an economist and professor at Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy who previously served as director of design for the SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot evaluation, said the shutdown’s impact on SNAP was “very unusual” and differed significantly from historic practice.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole career,” he said. “It’s never happened before in history that food assistance for low-income families was used as a lever of pressure politically during a government shutdown.”
Wilde also pointed to major policy changes reshaping SNAP under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including expanded work requirements for recipients and new cost-sharing rules that shift financial responsibility to states.
Wilde also raised alarm about the cancellation of the annual food security supplement to the Current Population Survey, the federal government’s primary tool for tracking national food related hardship.
“Not only are we stopping benefits for November so that people may just simply go without, we’re ending the major national survey that measures consequences of things like this,” Wilde said.
As SNAP regulations change and future budget debates loom large, recipients and organizations remain prepared for uncertainty.
“If someone asked me what the biggest concern is for us, I would say the unknown, because we just don’t know,” Amaral said. “[But] we’re going to do the very best we can to meet the challenge head-on.”
