{"id":369240,"date":"2026-10-09T20:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T20:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/369240\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T20:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T20:54:10","slug":"opinion-im-a-bronx-social-worker-and-former-snap-recipient-dont-let-washington-starve-our-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/369240\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: I’m a Bronx Social Worker and Former SNAP Recipient. Don’t Let Washington Starve Our Neighbors."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you aren\u2019t currently on\u00a0SNAP, it can be easy to view this as an abstract political debate. But food insecurity isn\u2019t abstract\u2014it\u2019s your neighbors, your coworkers, and the kids in your neighborhood school going to bed hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"food\"(Credit: Ed Reed\/Mayoral Photography Office)<\/p>\n

\"CityViews<\/a><\/p>\n

Every single day in the Bronx, I look into the eyes of people who are fighting just to stay afloat. As a social worker with direct experience supporting unhoused adults and men returning home from prison, I know that the difference between stability and crisis often comes down to a single, essential lifeline: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t just know this as a professional; I know it as someone who has relied on\u00a0SNAP\u00a0to survive. I know the quiet, suffocating anxiety of walking through a grocery aisle, calculating every cent, and relying on that EBT card so you don\u2019t have to put back a gallon of milk at the register.\u00a0SNAP\u00a0saves lives, reduces disease rates, improves employment outcomes, and lowers healthcare costs. It is not a luxury\u2014it is the bedrock of America\u2019s social safety net.<\/p>\n

Right now, that bedrock is being systematically dismantled.<\/p>\n

Under the federal \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act\u201d (OBBBA), Congress enacted the largest cuts to\u00a0SNAP\u00a0in the program\u2019s history\u2014stripping food access to pay for militarized immigration enforcement and tax cuts for the wealthy. Over 4 million people nationwide are at risk of losing their benefits altogether. The legislation aggressively expanded harsh work requirements<\/a> to adults up to age 64 and parents with children over 13, creating administrative hurdles designed to fail the very people who need help most.<\/p>\n

The consequences are no longer hypothetical\u2014they are hitting our streets in real time. Months after new federal work requirements began stripping benefits from thousands of low-income New Yorkers, an Oct. 1 milestone has opened a desperate race for people to try and re-enroll under punishing rules<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In New York City, where roughly 20 percent of residents rely on\u00a0SNAP, the impact is severe.\u00a0But nowhere is the damage more concentrated than right here in the Bronx, where over 40 percent of residents rely on federal food assistance and nearly 40 percent of households face active food insecurity.\u00a0Federal cuts have stripped food benefits from working parents, caregivers, and children across our borough, pushing families who were already on the edge into outright desperation.<\/p>\n

Worse still, Washington is building in a long-term policy trap. Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states will be forced to shoulder a portion of\u00a0SNAP\u00a0benefit costs based on their state \u201cerror rates.\u201d<\/a> Because of government shutdowns and delayed guidance from the USDA, state agencies have been left scrambling with only months to address these administrative metrics.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s call this what it is: a bad-faith narrative. Opponents of\u00a0SNAP\u00a0love to push bullshit rhetoric about widespread \u201cfraud\u201d or people \u201cabusing the system\u201d to justify tearing down social programs. But the reality on the ground is clear: people are not scamming the system; they are desperately trying to survive in an economy that has priced them out of basic human dignity.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, actual fraud in\u00a0SNAP\u00a0is exceptionally rare\u2014disqualifications typically represent about 0.1 percent of monthly caseloads nationwide. What politicians label as \u201cerror rates\u201d are overwhelmingly administrative, system-level mistakes\u2014made by overloaded, understaffed government offices or confused applicants navigating endless, convoluted paperwork. Punishing states for bureaucratic agency errors forces local governments to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs.<\/p>\n

For New York, this cost-shift will be catastrophic. Because our state must balance its budget annually, forced cost-sharing will compel Albany to either make devastating cuts to other essential city services or opt out of\u00a0SNAP\u00a0portions entirely.<\/p>\n

When federal aid gets slashed, politicians love to pass the buck to community nonprofits, soup kitchens, and local pantries. But let me be unequivocally clear from my years on the frontlines: charities cannot fix this.\u00a0Food pantries and mutual aid groups in the Bronx are already stretched past their breaking points.\u00a0A local church basement pantry or a soup kitchen cannot replace a multi-billion-dollar federal safety net.<\/p>\n

We need systemic political intervention, and we need our elected officials in Washington to step up immediately.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been a vocal champion in this fight, leading the effort to protect federal food benefits and block these draconian rollbacks. And as a constituent of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I am proud to see her consistently champion working-class New Yorkers, speak out against these cruel cuts, and demand accountability.<\/p>\n

However, holding the line requires our entire congressional delegation to treat this as the emergency it is. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand\u2014who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee\u2014must do more. As Congress negotiates relief packages for farmers and prepares for the upcoming Senate Farm Bill markup, our leaders must ensure that relief for farmers is strictly coupled with relief for families. Congress must act to delay the\u00a0SNAP\u00a0benefit cost-sharing requirement before states are backed into an impossible corner.<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t currently on\u00a0SNAP, it can be easy to view this as an abstract political debate. But food insecurity isn\u2019t abstract\u2014it\u2019s your neighbors, your coworkers, and the kids in your neighborhood school going to bed hungry. We should all care deeply when the people around us are deprived of basic nourishment.<\/p>\n

We cannot allow Washington to starve working families and weaponize administrative bureaucracy to fund corporate giveaways. It\u2019s time for New York\u2019s leaders to stand up, demand a delay on the\u00a0SNAP\u00a0cost shift, and ensure no New Yorker is forced to go hungry.<\/p>\n

Lex\u00a0Colleen (she\/her) is a Bronx based social worker and community organizer focusing on criminal legal reform work and economic justice issues, including nutrition access.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you aren\u2019t currently on\u00a0SNAP, it can be easy to view this as an abstract political debate. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-369240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}