With SNAP about to vanish, Healey admin advances food banks $4M to help them ride it out
With food benefits for 1.1 million people set to lapse as soon as Saturday, the Healey administration said it’s sending an extra $4 million to the Bay State’s food banks to keep assistance flowing.
During a news conference at the State House on Thursday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey continued to argue that the looming lapse in aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which will start on Saturday, was an avoidable crisis.
“This has been created by the president, and he really needs to change it,” Healey said, renewing her call for Republican President Donald Trump to order the U.S. Agriculture Department to release $23 billion in contingency funds that would keep the program going.
Healey also announced Thursday that a donation campaign, coordinated by the United Way, had resulted in more than $1 million in contributions.
Farmers and others, including Western Massachusetts-based Big Y, also had donated food and started charitable campaigns of their own, she said.
In addition, the administration launched a new “ resource hub ,” that includes information on how families facing hunger can get help, ways for people and businesses to offer help, and a new digital map showing how many people depend on SNAP benefits statewide.
The federal government shut down on Oct. 1 amid a funding dispute . In a letter to state SNAP agencies on Oct. 10, the Agriculture Department warned that it would lack the funds to pay full SNAP benefits starting Nov. 1 if the shutdown dragged on.
Without action, around 42 million people nationwide will lose benefits under the SNAP program, formerly referred to as “food stamps,” when it runs out of money as a result of the month-old federal government shutdown.
The Democratic governor has argued steadily that the agency has released such money in the past and could do it now if it chose to do so.
Taken together, the roughly $5 million in assistance that Healey announced Thursday effectively amounts to a rounding error to the $240 million a month the state receives through the SNAP program.
Healey has also consistently said the state cannot dip into its more than $8 billion Rainy Day Fund to pay for benefits on its own.
The federal government has also said it will not reimburse states that dip into their own pockets to cover SNAP costs.
Healey said the lapse in food aid would come on top of other social safety net cuts made by President Donald Trump and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill.
"I continue to call on those who can do something, those who can afford to give money to these organizations, those who can afford to give their time, those who can give food to these groups. It’s desperately, desperately needed,“ she said. ”And we’re going to continue to look for ways that we can help as we call on the president to release these funds."
Healey’s comments on Thursday came even as state Attorney General Andrea Campbell, joined by Democratic colleagues in more than two dozen states, asked a federal judge in Boston to order the government to keep the assistance flowing.
Marty Martinez, the president and CEO of the United Way of the Massachusetts Bay, said the philanthropic giant had been doing extensive legwork to raise money and increase access to food.
"As the governor said, we’re grateful for the over a million dollars that we’ve already been able to raise, but we all know that much more is needed," Martinez said, as he encouraged people to make donations through the organization’s website .
Other advocates at Thursday’s news conference encouraged SNAP beneficiaries who soon will lose benefits not to be shy about stepping forward to ask for help.
Doing so is not a sign of weakness, but rather, a sign of strength, they argued.
“No one in Massachusetts should face this crisis alone,“ Erin McAleer, the president and CEO of the Boston-based food assistance organization, Project Bread, said.
“I want to be clear, and if you remember one thing from today, I hope it’s this: Reaching out to ask for help is a sign of strength,” she said. “It’s how we take care of one another. Hunger is not an individual failing. Hunger is a policy failure. And policy is, in fact, failing us right now.”
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