Nonprofits are bracing for increased demand for volunteer opportunities for people who need them to be eligible for benefits.
More than 100,000 Virginians are no longer enrolled in the state’s food assistance program in the wake of tightening eligibility restrictions ushered in by Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.
Over 867,000 Virginians were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) last June, but a year later, that number had fallen to 749,000, according to state data.
The decline comes after Republicans in Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law legislation that lowered taxes for the wealthy and cut spending for social safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid.
The legislation, known as HR 1, cuts $187 billion from federal SNAP funding over the next decade, according to the governor’s office. It also shifts more of the cost of funding SNAP onto states and makes it harder to access the program. The Trump administration has also cut funding to food banks that are expected to see increased demand as enrollment in SNAP falls.
Sabrina Davis is the founder and executive director of Reset Inc., a Chesapeake nonprofit focused on food insecurity. Davis said compared with a year ago, she’s seen more working families coming to Reset‘s 24/7 walk-up food pantry and attending the nonprofit’s food distributions.
“I can tell you that our numbers have increased with the number of people who have food insecurities,” Davis said in an interview. “We see all walks of life. We see all ages.”
Trump’s legislation increased the maximum age for SNAP’s work requirement from 54 to 64. Adults up to age 64 who don’t have dependents have to work or volunteer at least 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month. People can apply for exemptions for different reasons, like if they are pregnant or have a condition that prevents them from working.
Davis said she is bracing for an influx of people who have to volunteer in order to keep their benefits. She plans to work with other organizations to help people find volunteer opportunities, but Davis worries about the “double-edged sword” of people losing their benefits because they can’t find enough volunteer hours to meet the work requirement.
“Now, we have a large number of people that are going to need this volunteer opportunity, or they’re going to need food,” Davis said. “And if we can’t put them to use to volunteer with our organizations, then they’re going to be the people now that are coming to us to get food assistance because now the food insecurity has risen.”
Rodrigo Soto is the legislative and campaigns director for The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. He said the changes to SNAP and Medicaid ushered in by HR 1 have raised fears in immigrant communities about how accessing these programs could impact them.
On Monday, the Trump administration published a new rule that lets immigration officers consider whether green card applicants received SNAP benefits. Soto said immigrants are worried that accepting SNAP benefits could be used against them, especially amid the uncertainty around the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigrants.
“I’ve seen this, having been an immigrant myself. […] Oftentimes people who are immigrants are just like, ‘I’d rather not even risk it, even if I may be eligible, even if this might not impact my eligibility to readjust my status, I’m just not going to risk it. And I’d rather just go at it alone and either get myself off the program or not even apply, even though I am hungry,’” Soto said in an interview.
Soto said state lawmakers are taking steps to address the coming strain on the social safety net. The recently passed state budget includes $135 million to deal with the additional costs of running the state’s SNAP program, and another $225 million in contingency funds if more is needed.
Soto said federal lawmakers could delay the SNAP cost shift to states to help ease the pressure on state budgets and provide resources to help states lower their SNAP error rates, which determine their federal funding levels.
He said there could also be more assistance directed toward food banks and other organizations seeing increased demand as people lose SNAP benefits.
“As SNAP disenrollment continues, it’s not that those people are no longer hungry,” Soto said. “It’s just that they’re not getting the benefits that they need.”
