Colleen Hammelman joined Charlotte Talks With Mike Collins to discuss the future of SNAP benefits in North Carolina
When funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was suspended due to the federal government shutdown, nearly 42 million recipients faced uncertainty about how to feed themselves and their families. Despite the government reopening, this uncertainty continues due to both the current gaps in the program and new restrictions.
Colleen Hammelman, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences and director of the Charlotte Action Research Project (CHARP), discussed the future of SNAP benefits on Charlotte Talks With Mike Collins, presented by WFAE.
Hammelman was joined by Susan Michelle Gross, associate practice professor with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Tracy Roof, associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond.
Current state of SNAP benefits
According to recent reports from the New York Times, the way SNAP benefits are calculated does not reflect the current reality of rising costs across the board, as recipients typically spend 80% of their benefits in the first half of the month, leaving them struggling to afford food the rest of the month.
“That calculation doesn’t match the reality for a lot of people today, our food expenses don’t exist in a silo on their own, so if you have to pay more for housing, that means that you have less resources for food. If you have to pay more for healthcare or medicine, that means you have less resources for food,” Hammelman explained.
Future of SNAP in North Carolina
As a result of the Big Beautiful Bill, some recipients will be required to meet stricter work requirements and states will have to take on part of the cost of SNAP benefits.
“It’s going to be a really big challenge in North Carolina, where our budgets are already very tight,” Hammelman said. “North Carolina is a state where the counties pay a lot of those costs, so we’re going to see some real uneven impacts of that across the state, where you have some counties that have more resources and perhaps fewer people that use SNAP, and other counties that have greater need but lower resources, especially some of the rural counties across our state.”
Economic impact of SNAP
Suspending SNAP benefits also has a wider impact on the economy, affecting farmers and retailers across the country.
“There’s evidence that for every dollar spent of stamp benefits, there is one dollar and fifty-four cents generated in economic activity,” said Hammelman. “Because when you give people money to meet their very basic needs, they go out and spend it. So that’s money that goes immediately back into our economies.”
On a local level, SNAP benefits positively impact the Charlotte-Mecklenburg economy as well.
“There are some estimates that here in Mecklenburg County, when total monthly benefits reach about twenty-three million dollars, that generates an estimated thirty-five to forty million dollars in economic impact,” Hammelman said. “So when those dollars come out of our economy, it’s very impactful across the city.”
Listen to the full episode via WFAE.
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Learn more about the Charlotte Action Research Project (CHARP), which forges partnerships between UNC Charlotte and Charlotte communities to address pressing needs such as food insecurity.