Michigan families, food banks brace for looming SNAP pause

The looming pause in food assistance benefits for 1.4 million Michiganders next month has families all across the state anxiously scrambling to plan and food pantries preparing to serve more people.

The federal government directed the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to pause November SNAP benefits until further notice — a move that “will be felt around the state,” MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel said last week. The state received word from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture that, due to the federal government shutdown, there may be a delay in November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits because there aren’t enough funds to pay for it if the shutdown persists. SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, provides benefits to low-income families and is regarded as the largest anti-hunger program in the country.

“SNAP is more than a food assistance program; it’s a lifeline for many Michigan families,” Hertel said.

Gregory Hicks, who has been coming to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen since November of last year, pushes his shopping cart, as he walks out of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has paused food assistance benefits in November due to the government shutdown, putting added pressure on food banks as the holidays approach. (USA TODAY Network)

In Michigan, where nearly 13% of households receive SNAP benefits, news of the pause had families, from Detroit to Interlochen, preparing to go to food pantries and worried about what’s to come. Food banks and pantries, meanwhile, have already seen an uptick in need but resources are stretched thin. And Detroit grocers say, with the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, the benefits pause will soon hit customers — or already has.

“This is not delay,” said Phil Knight, executive director of the Food Bank Council of Michigan. “This is loss.”

Michigan families already feeling the pressure

In anticipation of the SNAP pause next month, Detroiter Symone Wilkes is trying to come up with a game plan but she’s on a time crunch.

“I really don’t know how we’re gonna survive in November. I’ve been calling around to food pantries, but they’re full to capacity,” said Wilkes, who works part-time as a community outreach specialist at an early childhood organization.

The pause is putting her in a tough spot as she tries to find other food pantries, but that means driving out there, which in turn means spending more money on gas. She worries about how she will feed her kids.

Wilkes, a single parent, was “in a frenzy” when she learned that her SNAP benefits — money she depends on — were at risk. SNAP dollars, the $540 she receives a month, allowed the mom of two young boys to purchase food until her next paycheck.

“We don’t have a real family village, so it’s just us. And that helped me feed them throughout the month along with the little money I have leftover once I pay bills,” she said.

Wilkes said she tries to set aside at least $100 in SNAP benefits so she has money on the first of the month, but as November approaches, she has no benefits left. She’s spent the remaining $60, trying to buy foods that will last.

In northern Michigan, Dana Tuller is starting her third job as a warehouse sorter. She’s also a part-time job office administrator at her church and does advocacy work, representing parents and families.

In August, her husband — who was the primary earner in her family — had unexpected open-heart surgery and hasn’t been able to work, putting the family in a “big lurch.” They never qualified for food assistance benefits because he made too much money. But, with the loss of his income and bills pouring in, the family applied for benefits at the end of September when her husband’s paychecks officially dried up.

“It’s always what do I pay and what don’t I pay,” said Tuller, now the primary breadwinner in her family.

Considering the time and effort it took to apply for assistance, Tuller is grappling with the news that SNAP is on hold — her family finally got the benefits this month after getting approved. The mom of four kids, ages 8 to 12, was able to go to the grocery store and buy what she needed. She didn’t have to count empty pop cans to return to have enough to buy a gallon of milk. She didn’t have to go to the pantries. In Interlochen, where she lives, it’s a drive to go anywhere, she said. Now, she’ll have to go back to the pantries.

“I don’t have any other choice,” she said.

Mary Short, of Kalamazoo, knows what it’s like for SNAP benefits to stop suddenly. After years, her benefits were cut off in February after paychecks from December got wrapped up into January, putting her over the income qualifications, she said.

“I was scared and terrified and I wanted to cry because I know that feeling. It’s very terrifying to feel like the rug is pulled out from underneath you,” Short said.

With two teenagers, Short’s grocery bill is about $1,100 a month. Short — who works full time as a project manager, cleans houses and is a bartender — was getting $600 a month in benefits and she had to figure out how to make up for that gap. Despite working 70 to 90 hours a week, she still has late bills and has visited food banks.

“My pantry is very empty and my kids feel very anxious about it when there isn’t a lot of food in the fridge and that’s when I start picking up extra work,” Short, a single parent, said.

Over in Hillsdale, Melissa Miles said that, as a full-time university student who doesn’t have a job, SNAP is the “root of our food source.”

“It’s for fresh fruits and vegetables, making sure there’s always milk in the house. Without those essential items then we have to then rely on other family members to help provide for us,” said Miles, a single mom of a 5-year-old.

The unknown is what worries Miles.

“When you don’t know where your next meal is gonna come from, life gets really chaotic and scary all at once,” she said. “It also feels like, bureaucratically, our government doesn’t care.”

She doesn’t have savings to supplement the loss of $463 in SNAP benefits. Come November, Miles said she’ll have to visit the food pantry weekly. Her son is her priority, she said. If she has to go without a meal so he can eat, that’s what she’ll do. Miles has $300 remaining in benefits she’s holding onto, to portion out, in the hopes that the government “changes its mind.”

“We’re a week away from November. Nobody had time to prepare,” Miles said.

Food banks, pantries brace for impact

Charitable organizations and the federal food benefits program are part of the safety net working to catch vulnerable families struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck. And so, the SNAP pause knocks down an important pillar of that system, adding pressure onto the state’s already squeezed food banks and pantries, agency leaders told the Free Press.

“The mission for the food banks does not change, regardless of policy, politics or programming. We’re there to try to help people bridge that gap between what they have and what they need. And we can supplement, but we cannot substitute for a federal program like SNAP, we cannot scale charity,” Knight, of the food bank council, said.

Resources are already “stretched thin” for organizations like Forgotten Harvest, according to Chris Ivey, chief marketing and communications officer for the Oak Park-based food rescue nonprofit. Expenses have gone up in the past few years and it’s essentially costing more to do the same business.

“As the number of guests we have to serve goes up, there is going to be the same amount of food, so we either have to give less food per distribution or we’ll have to buy more food to keep that level even. … We hope that this shutdown ends quickly,” he said. If the pause continues, Forgotten Harvest will extensively fundraise.

The SNAP pause comes at a time of already increasing need and local organizations are preparing for a new influx.

In January 2022, the Detroit-based Capuchin Services Center, providing food and clothing, saw 1,170 families and the number has grown. In July of this year, the organization served 3,083 families.

That number is likely going to climb to upward of 5,000, according to Fred Cabras, director of social services for the Detroit-based Capuchin Soup Kitchen. Households rely on food pantries and food assistance as a supplement, so they can pay their utilities and rent, especially if they don’t make enough income to cover the basics, he said.

Charles Murphy, a jewelry maker from Detroit, looks for food items inside the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (USA TODAY Network)

The pause, he said, is going to be “devastating” for working families, who are already struggling with high food costs. It’s also hitting families’ budgets as they head into the holidays.

“Our busiest months often are November and December because of the holidays, so this is coming at a very inopportune time for families,” Cabras said.

In Troy, Kristin Olmedo, CEO of the United Community Family Services, said calls to sign up for the food pantry had gone up “exponentially” even before the news of the pause was official. The day before, for instance, the organization received 15 calls to register for the pantry. That’s how many calls the organization got for the whole month of June.

“We’ve been trying to keep up with the demand of new people wanting to register for our food pantry in preparation of this,” Olmedo said.

Kristin Sokul, senior director of advancement communications for Gleaners Community Food Bank, said the organization plans to be responsive and buy more food, but the “longer resources are unavailable, the greater the influx of need.”

Food banks are nimble and resourceful, but can’t fill the gap alone, amid high food costs and heightened need.

“You can’t just pull SNAP out of the economy and put food banks in and think everything’s the same,” Knight said.

Impact of SNAP in Michigan

SNAP benefits are a key tool to combat poverty and food insecurity, nutrition experts told the Free Press.

“SNAP is … the most effective strategy we have to reduce poverty for children and families,” said Kate Bauer, associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

Bauer, who led a research project surveying nearly 1,300 Michigan families facing food insecurity, said the pause will have a ripple effect on the community.

More than a third of SNAP households in Michigan have older adults while nearly half include children. According to MDHHS, 492,225 children benefit from the food assistance. In the 2024 fiscal year, the average Michigan household receiving SNAP benefits got about $335 a month, which breaks down to $173 per person a month, or $5.68 for each person a day.

“We have very strong evidence that SNAP addresses food insecurity and that it addresses food insecurity among some of our most vulnerable families, households with children. Risk of food insecurity is particularly high among households with children, among households with older adults, and among individuals and households managing one or more disabilities,” said Jennifer Garner, a registered dietitian and food security researcher at the University of Michigan.

Grocers ready to help

Edwin Stafford Jr., an employee at Capuchin Soup Kitchen, helps unload a truck parked outside the soup kitchen in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (USA TODAY Network)

On the business front, more than 9,700 retailers accept SNAP, allowing them to redeem more than $3.6 billion in 2023 alone.

“SNAP is really an economic infusion for communities, because where do those SNAP dollars get spent? They get spent, mostly, at local retailers, local food stores, local grocers,” Garner, the U-M researcher, said. Removing that “stimulus” will strain an already frayed system where healthy food is hard to come by, she said.

Elizabeth Aboona, owner of Americana Foods on Plymouth Road on Detroit’s west side, is prepared to help customers.

“We have been anticipating this news and are currently doing contingency planning on how we can help our customers, from food giveaways to other means of assistance.” Aboona wrote in an email to the Free Press.

While Aboona said they have not seen changes in consumer purchases, it likely will happen.

“We know losing benefits will affect them in significant ways, in particular with Thanksgiving coming soon,” she wrote. “As a business owner, we may also see some customers seeking out Big Box options — retailers with significant buying power — outside the area. This could also be a day-to-day reality.”

Greenfield Market on Puritan in Detroit has been serving the community for nearly 50 years. The market’s front-end manager, Sheila Doss, said with the news of November SNAP benefits being halted “people are panicking and we are trying to reassure them that we are there for them,” she said in an email about the pause in SNAP benefits.

“They already have been gravitating toward our discounted items and shopping wisely overall, especially focused on inexpensive staples such as bread and cheese,“ she said.

Doss added that with the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, customers are buying items in advance.

“We are praying for a resolution. Our customers depend on us and their benefits to feed their families and we depend on them for our livelihoods,” Doss said.

How to get help

To find area food pantries and other resources, go to www.fbcmich.org/food-bank-network; pantrynet.org; www.forgottenharvest.org/find-food, or call the Michigan 211 line.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan families, food banks brace for looming SNAP pause

Reporting by Nushrat Rahman and Susan Selasky, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press

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