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- Simone Parent, 56, is one of the millions of American about to see cuts to her food stamp benefits.
- In March, a pandemic-era program beefing up SNAP benefits will wind down.
- It means a "hunger cliff" for many food stamp recipients, who are facing smaller budgets and high food prices.
Come March, Simone Parent is anticipating hunger pains.
"It's the feeling you get at the pit of your stomach when you're really hungry — it makes you want to puke. That's what you feel like, but you got nothing in there." she said. "It's not a good feeling."
Parent, 56, is one of the millions of Americans facing a reduction in SNAP benefits. In March, a pandemic-era expansion of the food assistance program will come to an end, leaving 16 million households with $82 less a month, as HuffPost first reported.
Beginning in 2020, SNAP recipients were bumped up to receive the maximum level of benefits, instead of benefits being determined by income. For the lowest-earners — those traditionally eligible for the highest amount of benefits — an additional $95 was tacked onto their monthly allocations.
However, the December omnibus bill stipulated that that expansion would come to an end in March, even as food prices — especially those for essentials — remain elevated. It's what advocates describe as a hunger cliff, and one that Parent is standing on the edge of. For some American families, it means $258 will come out of their grocery budgets.
For Parent, who already receives disability benefits, high rents and costly housing are a huge financial drag. She says her current benefits barely alleviate the high cost-of-living.
"With the gas bills the way they are and electric right now, we don't have enough to survive. We barely make it, and that's with going without," she said.
"I got to speak for everybody: We don't know what we're going to do."
Parent lives on roughly $11,000 a year. This includes disability, Social Security and SNAP.
Now, due to a 8.7% cost of living adjustment to Social Security that pushes her into a higher income bracket, her benefits are decreasing by about $40 a month, and she will no longer receive the additional pandemic-era bump of $95 — a substantial dip.
She's not alone: In Parent's home state of California, more than 200 households out of every 1,000 households are receiving the emergency allotments, amounting to more than $520 million distributed, according to data from the Food Research & Action Center.
"I got to speak for everybody: We don't know what we're going to do. They have food banks, but they only have so much food there and they're already sweating it," Parent said.
SNAP recipients like Parent are taking a blow to their grocery budgets right as food prices remain persistently high, especially staples like milk, eggs, and bread. When she first began receiving the enhanced benefits in 2020, she was able to fill up a whole grocery cart with the amount she was receiving. Now, she said, she paid $83 for just two bags of groceries recently. The last time she went out to eat was about a year and a half ago; she went to Carl Jr.'s, and still spent about $20 on two burgers and fries.
"A loaf of bread is almost $5. How is somebody supposed to survive with that?" she said. "And now they're just going to take everything away and people are going to go without, if they're not already."
Parent and her son don't know what they're going to do when the benefits come down in just a few weeks.
"We don't know how we're going to make it," she said. "We barely make it now."
She wishes the lawmakers who opted to cut off the emergency allotments would put themselves in the shoes of those getting cut off: "We're all human. We all deserve to be treated the same," she said.
"I don't get why these rich people keep getting richer and us poor keep getting poorer."