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Households with low incomes face hard choices between paying for food and paying for other basics such as shelter and medicine. Those choices will get even harder for participants when the COVID-19 health emergency ends and, with it, the SNAP Emergency Allotments that have boosted benefits temporarily. Most SNAP participants will lose an average of $82 a month.

A SNAP deductions strategy should be an important part of addressing that looming “hunger cliff.”

In less than a month, COVID-19 shifted the economic stability of millions of people in America through health emergencies, job loss, restaurant sector disruptions, and school closures. The federal government’s expansions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), child nutrition programs, and other federal safety net programs, such as Child Tax Credits and Unemployment Insurance boosts, prevented a catastrophic increase in hunger and poverty. 

Widespread exposure to hardship during the COVID-19 crisis also has made a dent in the negative judgments between who is “deserving” and “undeserving” of government aid. Our nation needs to build on this renewed support for public assistance that any of us might need to access. We must redouble our efforts to erase the stigmatization of the federal nutrition programs, and instead promote their role in enhancing food security, well-being, health, and dignity.

As the year comes to a close, we would like to shine a light on the top eight ways FRAC and its network of anti-hunger advocates once again led the fight to eradicate poverty-related hunger and undernutrition in the United States during this unprecedented time.

As of mid-November 2021, 40 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been approved to continue EAs for all SNAP households. The statutory authority for those issuances, however, will end when pandemic-related health emergency declarations end.
At that point, unless Congress takes action, all SNAP households will revert to traditional program calculations. On average, SNAP households in the formerly EA states will lose $82 per month in SNAP benefits.

This year, D.C. Hunger Solutions published Still Minding the Grocery Gap: A 2021 Update, which found that no new grocery stores had been built in the past year in low-income Wards. However, there were major policy changes, including significant financial investments, to address the disparities in grocery store access.