"This Is Need Like We Never Have Seen Before": Federal Food Benefits Are Set to Be Frozen Amid the Government Shutdown

Get more recipes, food news, and stories at wttw.com/food or by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter. 
Have a food story or recommendation? Email us at [email protected].

Joanna Martinez has yet to turn on the heat in her apartment in Logan Square, waiting as long as possible so that she can save on bills. “We brought out the big blankets,” she said. Martinez, who works for the Head Start early childhood program at the social services organization Northwestern Settlement, is a single mother of two children living in a low-income housing unit. Like nearly 1.9 million other people in Illinois, she is a recipient of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, which are set to expire November 1 if Congress or the Trump administration do not prevent the freeze.

“Food is a bill,” said Martinez. “That’s one bill that I [haven’t had] to worry about, because I do get help from the government.” But Martinez is now worried about how she will pay that bill if she does not get SNAP benefits in November. 

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that it will not distribute SNAP benefits in November unless Congress reaches a deal to end the government shutdown. The cessation of benefits comes as federal government employees aren’t receiving paychecks and as Thanksgiving and winter approach. Emergency food programs are warning that they will not be able to handle the need that will arise when people can no longer use federal benefits to go to the grocery store.

“We’re not going to be able to food pantry our way out of this crisis,” said Margaret O’Conor, the executive director of Common Pantry, a food pantry in North Center that always sees the most need in the last two months of the year. “The federal freeze is going to catapult hunger in a way that we didn’t really even see in COVID.” 

According to the most recent data from the Illinois Department of Human Services, nearly 1.9 million Illinoisans received SNAP benefits in August. Over 850,000 recipients live in Cook County. The aid averages $187 a month per low-income enrollee to purchase groceries.

The USDA has argued that it lacks the legal authority to use a roughly $5 billion contingency fund for food benefits, reversing its position from earlier this month that the fund could be used to keep SNAP benefits flowing even during a government shutdown. Illinois has joined 25 states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for its refusal to fund SNAP. The government has never defaulted on SNAP benefits before. 

“This is need like we never have seen before,” said Camerin Mattson, manager of communications at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which partners with more than 850 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other programs in Cook County to distribute food. 

For Martinez, relying on a food pantry, where there are fewer options and limited quantities, is difficult. Her teenage daughter is “very picky,” so the ability to go to the grocery store and choose products that she can pay for with SNAP helps her get her daughter to eat. 

“We just don’t have the luxury of all that choice,” says Yasmin Rodriguez, the director of support services at Northwestern Settlement, which also runs a food pantry. “Do I have some canned beans and corn and stuff like that on the shelf? Yes. The choice then comes whether you want to take it or not.”

“It breaks my heart because my oldest daughter tells me, ‘Mom, how are we supposed to have Thanksgiving if they’re taking your Link away?’” Martinez said, referring to the federal freeze. (Link is the card Illinois distributes for residents to use SNAP benefits.) She’s planning to bring her kids to a Thanksgiving meal hosted by her employer, and to look into cheap Thanksgiving packages offered at Aldi or Walmart.

Martinez recently moved from part-time to full-time work to make more money, but the increased wages mean she now receives less money in SNAP benefits.

The food assistance freeze is coming as new work requirements for SNAP are rolling out, changes that are anticipated to cause many Illinois residents to lose federal food benefits. The new requirements were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed over unified Democratic opposition by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Trump over summer. The Greater Chicago Food Depository warned at the time that the changes would be “catastrophic.” 

“Honestly, in this world we live in, we need help from the government,” Martinez said. SNAP is “one thing that really does help me and my kids live. I just want people to understand that it’s not bad to get the help.” She grew up in a low-income family and used to feel bad about using food benefits. But “when you’re born into a family like that, it’s hard to get out of it…My intentions are to keep on trying for my family, but I was born into that.”

“I think people think that SNAP recipients are maybe lazy or not working or not doing things for themselves,” Rodriguez said. “That’s not what I see. What I see is hardworking people who just can’t make ends meet. They are literally paycheck to paycheck.”

SNAP is funded yearly by Congress, which has failed to pass legislation to fund the government and thus triggered a shutdown that began on October 1. SNAP maintains a reserve fund in case of emergencies, but the Trump administration has claimed there are legal hurdles preventing it from using that fund to maintain SNAP benefits into November. It has used a different set of funds to continue the low-income food assistance program WIC during the shutdown. It has also found money during the shutdown to fund priorities of President Trump, such as the salaries of the military and federal immigration agents, and keeping open USDA offices that help farmers access funding.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has drafted a bill to fund SNAP through the shutdown and argued for it in an op-ed in the New York Times, but Senate Republican leadership has not yet scheduled it for a vote.

“If you look at the hunger reports that the USDA puts out, you’ll see that hunger basically touches every county in America,” said O’Conor of Common Pantry. “So there has to be some sort of response on the national level to addressing hunger. It is not partisan.”

“States cannot do this individually,” she added. 

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker is planning to sign an executive order supporting Illinois residents who rely on SNAP by directing $20 million in state funds to food banks like the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The USDA has said that states that cover SNAP benefits in November will not be reimbursed.

“Currently in Chicago one in five households is experiencing food insecurity,” said Mattson of the Food Depository. The Food Depository and many of its partner organizations have seen elevated need ever since the pandemic five years ago, serving a record 2.4 million households in 2024. But that assistance pales in comparison to federal food benefits: for every one meal that the emergency food system of food banks and pantries provides, SNAP provides nine meals, according to the Food Depository.

“Need is already high and many of our locations are already near capacity,” Mattson said. “We wish that this was a need that was small enough and manageable enough that donations could cover it.”

Northwestern Settlement’s food pantry has already seen increased need in the past month, with significant numbers of new visitors, according to Rodriguez. She has had to reduce the quantity of items that clients can take from the pantry in order to keep up with the demand and not run out of food.

Rodriguez compares the “emergency” that would happen if SNAP benefits were frozen to the pandemic. “COVID was this thing that happened, and it happened to all of us. It didn’t matter whether you were on SNAP or you had a $100,000-a-year job,” she said. 

By contrast, the SNAP freeze “is specifically to a group of people who are already struggling, who are already just surviving day to day. And it’s a choice. We could fund this. We can make this a little bit better – and we’re not.” 

Editor’s note: The author has volunteered at Common Pantry.