Originally Posted in Crain’s Detroit Business by Sherri Welch
More than 1.4 million Michigan residents — one in eight people statewide — will lose food assistance starting Saturday when the federal government suspends SNAP benefits indefinitely amid the ongoing shutdown.
So local emergency food providers, nonprofits and the state are scrambling available resources to help, but warn that they cannot fill the massive need that will result from the SNAP cutoff.
More than 42 million people in 22 million U.S. households participate in the program, according to government data. For every meal food banks and rescues provide, the federal SNAP program funds nine, according to U.S. hunger relief association Feeding America.
The cutoff would deepen food insecurity for low-income households that rely on the benefits to buy groceries each month and exacerbate the strain on federal workers who aren’t being paid during the government shutdown.
The USDA ordered Michigan and other states to halt payment of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits until further notice, starting Nov. 1. The halt comes amid the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 after Congress failed to pass an appropriations bill that funds the operations of federal agencies and programs.
Emergency food providers are already under pressure amid rising demand due to a variety of factors and the loss of millions of pounds of USDA food distributed to Michigan this year.
In Michigan, the SNAP program assists 1.4 million people or 13% of the state’s population. About 43% are families with children and more than a third, or 36%, are families with senior citizens or people with disabilities, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Tuesday joined a coalition of 22 other attorneys general and three governors in filing a lawsuit against the USDA and its Secretary Brooke Rollins for what they allege is the unlawful suspension of the SNAP program. They argue the department must use nearly
$6 billion in contingency funding to keep the program operational for as long as possible.
United Way for Southeastern Michigan has launched an online petition to urge the Trump administration to release the contingency funds, which have been used during previous government shutdowns. The nonprofit is encouraging people to reach out to Congress and federal officials “to do everything they can” to ensure millions of Americans don’t lose critical food support during the prolonged shutdown, said Jerome Espy, United Way’s senior director of communications and media relations.
Several states including Virginia, Louisiana and Rhode Island have declared a state of emergency over the loss of SNAP benefits while other states have taken different actions, such as providing emergency funding to food banks.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Battle Creek-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the national Marguerite Casey Foundation are putting an undisclosed amount of new funding behind the Fair Food Network’s Double Up Food Bucks, an established program that provides matching credits for the purchase of fresh produce. The program puts more healthy food on tables while also supporting farmers and retailers in local communities.
Program changes that will run through Dec. 31 are aimed at increasing access to produce amid the expected SNAP pause. They include:
- an unlimited match for SNAP dollars spent on fruits and vegetables
- no expiration on earned Double Up Food Bucks expanded purchase eligibility to include frozen fruits and vegetables (no added salt, sugar or oil)
- a new limited-time voucher for $40 that does not require a matching SNAP purchase and can be used for fresh or frozen produce at participating locations.
“More than a million Michigan families could lose SNAP at the end of this week, so we’re doing everything we can at the state level to help absorb that impact and find other ways to keep food on the table,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a news release.
Increased demand
Local food banks and rescues are already stretched thin, with cuts in federal support and the increasing number of people seeking food assistance every month this year amid inflation and the rising costs of food and other goods. But they, too, are looking at ways to help meet at least part of the ballooning need for food expected under a SNAP pause.
Some providers are already seeing a growing number of people seeking food help in advance of the benefits cutoff.
Others said they expect to see a surge in the coming days.
The number of people visiting Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan sites this month was up 10% even before news of the SNAP pause was announced late last week, spokeswoman Kristin Sokul said.
Some people who seek Gleaners’ help receive SNAP benefits while others seek help because they aren’t eligible, she said.
The Detroit-based food bank served more than 1 million households last year through distributions to 400 food pantries, soup kitchens, schools and drive-up grocery distributions in five Southeast Michigan counties.
“We expect, the closer that we get to benefits being missed, the more we will see people in our lines,” Sokul said.
Gleaners is monitoring conditions and in conversations with key partners such as United Way for Southeastern Michigan, the Food Bank Council of Michigan, the state’s other six food banks and philanthropic funders like DTE Energy Co. and Ford Motor Co., she said. The nonprofit is also planning to use its mobile food pantry trucks to respond to “hot spots” and working to bring more food into its warehouses to support people in their near-term, urgent need as their next SNAP payments are halted.
“We, the charitable food network, cannot replace SNAP. We’re not going to pretend that we can,” Sokul said. “But we are used to mobilizing and pivoting with little or no notice, and we can look at using our resources to the fullest to help our partners purchase food, and (are) setting aside funds to do that.”
The USDA provided 14.7 million pounds of food to Gleaners in fiscal 2024. It received 5.1 million pounds less in its fiscal 2025, which ended Sept. 30, and is projecting the same for the next, Sokul said. Gleaners is operating on a $26.5 million budget for fiscal 2026, which began Oct. 1. Within that, it had $8.8 million designated for purchasing food.
Gleaners has about 42 days of cash on reserve for operations beyond necessary capital investments, donor restricted funds, a projected cash revenue decrease in fiscal 2026 and the 180-day minimum it’s required to hold by its board for unexpected or urgent needs, Sokul said.
“We’re working with food economics where we’re receiving less donated food than we have historically, at a time where it’s also more costly to purchase it,” she said.
Ann Arbor-based Food Gatherers, a food bank and food rescue program serving Washtenaw County, also plans to purchase more food so it can increase distributions in November to help people impacted by the halted SNAP benefits, President and CEO Eileen Spring said in an email.
“We are going to do what we can to ramp in November, but the charitable system cannot ever replace SNAP,” she said.
Oak Park-based food rescue Forgotten Harvest has not gotten 43 truckloads, or 1.3 million pounds, of food it had expected from the USDA this year, President and CEO Adrian Lewis said. Its leadership decided to pull $2 million from its operating reserves this summer to help purchase food — mostly high-demand protein — to help meet need through the end of the year. It has about a quarter of the food it purchased left for distribution, Lewis said.
Forgotten Harvest is operating on a $16 million budget with about a year’s worth of funding in reserve or available, Lewis said.
Amid rising demand, the nonprofit is strategizing to maintain services, considering a new fundraising push and planning to leverage its existing distribution sites in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. “We know that spending $2 million of our reserves did help, but now we are at the point of this significant demand,” Lewis said. “We’re going to do everything we can, but we know we aren’t designed to replace SNAP — we’re designed to supplement it.”
Meanwhile, the expected drop in SNAP customers in grocery stores will impact revenue for retailers as well as the pipeline of food typically donated by grocers, Lewis said.
“Many of the grocery stores and retailers we’d normally get food from, guess what? Their ordering systems will not allow them to order what they don’t need,” he said. So stores will order less food in response to decreased demand from SNAP customers and thus have less surplus to donate, Lewis said.
Other nonprofits serving low-income, high-need populations are also voicing concerns about the impact of the SNAP cutoff.
Lighthouse Michigan provided food to more than 111,000 people last fiscal year through the distribution of food boxes from three sites in Oakland County. That food reached more than three-quarters of the 62 cities in the county, President and CEO Ryan Hertz said.
Lighthouse has seen increased demand, especially at the Pontiac pantry that provided food boxes to 1,000 people this month so far, up from 750 in May.
Operating on a $16.4 million budget, Lighthouse has 217 days of cash reserves, Hertz said. But liquidity requirements on its affordable housing development agreements limit the amount of cash the organization can expend, he said.
The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the inadequacy of SNAP benefits, Hertz said, and current cuts along with the SNAP pause are expected to exacerbate the situation.
“We’re going to do what we can. But what we can do will be limited to our community’s response to the degree to which we are resourced,” he said.
Detroit Area Agency on Aging serves more than 136,000 older adults and caregivers in Detroit, Hamtramck, Harper Woods, Highland Park and the five Grosse Pointes. About 35% of them will be impacted by a SNAP pause, President and CEO Ronald Taylor said.
“The impact is going to be devastating in many respects,” he said. Its Meals on Wheels program provides one meal per day, but those benefiting from it need more than that, Taylor said.
He’s talking with area churches and other community organizations about ways to help fill the gap and with emergency food providers like Gleaners about the prospect of getting food boxes to distribute to seniors.
“There’s going to have to be a collective effort to have a collective impact for the community and respond to this concern and this issue,” Taylor said.
— Bloomberg contributed to this report.
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