Federal shutdown threatens food aid in WNC
In North Carolina, 80% of SNAP households have at least one member working.
File photo
Waynesville resident Sam Wilds is blind, cannot work, uses her entire Social Security disability check for household bills, has approximately $50 left on her SNAP card for the month of October, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
On Oct. 16, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter to county directors of social services warning that while prorated October benefits are still assured, “currently available funds are not sufficient to ensure full issuance of November 2025 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for households nationwide, including approximately 1.4 million North Carolinians who receive Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) benefits.”
Now, as fall sets in and the ongoing federal government shutdown drags on — the Trump administration announced that no food aid will be distributed after Oct. 31 —food insecurity in North Carolina could mean a bleak Thanksgiving for some of the most vulnerable individuals and families across the state and the region. Wilds survives on about $192 a month in SNAP benefits.
“It makes me feel a little nervous, a little bit,” Wilds told The Smoky Mountain News. “I haven’t really thought about it just yet, but I will have to be making other plans. It’s just going to be a struggle, it really is, to not starve.”
Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, comes entirely from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and serves more than 42 million Americans annually. Rules come from the federal government, while day-to-day management including processing applications, determining eligibility, issuing benefits and enforcing work requirements, is done by state agencies, usually through county departments of social services.
In North Carolina, where 80% of SNAP households include someone who is working, the program is run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Social Services, which delegates administration to each county’s social services office.
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Many of those 1.4 million North Carolinians who receive SNAP benefits are children, seniors, or like Wilds, people with disabilities who live on fixed incomes. More than 46,000 are veterans.
County departments of social services continue to accept new applications and process recertifications, but for now, the state is advising recipients to plan ahead, use October benefits carefully and check balances regularly.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 5-year American Community Survey estimate, the percentage of people living below the poverty level in Haywood County in 2023 was 11.3%. Perhaps not coincidentally, 11.9% of Haywood County residents utilize SNAP benefits.
On the ground, that translates to more than 7,500 people, said Ira Dove, director of Haywood County’s Department of Social Services. In September, the total amount of federal SNAP benefits distributed to recipients in the county — who in turn inject those funds into the local economy — was more than $1.2 million.
The special SNAP program for women, infants and children, often called WIC, provides food assistance, nutrition education and healthcare referrals to low-income pregnant or postpartum women, infants and children under five. Funded federally and run by states, WIC helps ensure healthy pregnancies, proper childhood development and improved family nutrition outcomes.
Enrollment numbers for WIC lag by about three months, but in July, more than 1,250 individuals in Haywood County were served, according to Dove, for a total of roughly $83,000 monthly.
Additionally, 107 people in Haywood County also qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal program providing short-term financial help to low-income families with children. Administered in North Carolina as Work First Family Assistance, it promotes employment, limits benefits to five years and supports self-sufficiency through job training, childcare and work participation requirements. Nearly $16,500 in federal benefits were issued in Haywood County in September.
In Jackson County, the percentage of people living below the poverty level in 2023 was 19.3%. As of September, 7.5% of the county, or about 3,400 people, utilized SNAP benefits that on average total roughly $817,000 a month.
Jackson County WIC serves an average caseload of 845 people per month and provides benefits averaging about $68,000 a month.
The county’s Work First program supported 53 individuals in September and provides about $125,000 in benefits each month.
Between Haywood and Jackson counties alone, the suspension of USDA funding will impact at least 13,000 people and also remove more than $2.3 million from the local economy — affecting farmers, grocers, retailers and local government sales tax collections each month until funding resumes.
“This decision is being made by the federal government, and not your local DSS agency,” said Cris Weatherford, director of the Jackson County Department of Social Services.
Macon County DSS Director Patrick Betancourt noted that in Macon, about 3,800 individuals from 1,950 households, including about 1,275 children, receive SNAP benefits. That comes out to roughly 10% of the population in a county with a 14.4% poverty rate.
“This is a critical age range, as these are young individuals who depend on these benefits for proper nutrition to support their growth and development,” Betancourt said in an email.
In Swain County, 1,751 individuals utilized some form of food assistance during the month of September, according to NCDHHS. At 21.1%, Swain’s poverty rate is far higher than in Haywood, Jackson and Macon counties, although food assistance utilization hovers around 12.6%.
During the last prolonged shutdown, states with remaining funds were allowed to issue early SNAP payments to prevent gaps in aid, but states are legally prohibited from funding SNAP programs on their own.
On Oct. 24, the USDA said its $5 billion contingency fund is “ not legally available” to cover regular benefits during the shutdown, leaving the state with few options beyond warning residents.
If the shutdown does indeed stretch deeper into November, local food banks and pantries could see surging demand as families look for alternative sources of food.
MANNA FoodBank, the region’s largest hunger relief network, has already begun preparing for the worst. Serving 16 counties and the Qualla Boundary, MANNA now reports providing food to nearly 195,000 people each month, up from recent months. That increase, said Chief Development Officer Joe Beckler, reflects a mix of lingering recovery from Hurricane Helene, higher food prices and rising housing costs.
“Our neighbors are having to choose,” Beckler said. “Are they going to pay for their car insurance, their housing payment, their childcare or their food?”
So long as SNAP funding is unavailable, MANNA expects to see immediate pressure on its partner pantries.
For every meal MANNA provides, Beckler said, the federal SNAP program provides nine, meaning no food bank can scale up to replace that level of loss. MANNA is expanding donor outreach and organizing a virtual food drive in November to help boost inventory, but Beckler said the math doesn’t favor nonprofits trying to fill a federal gap — a hard lesson again demonstrated during the aftermath of Helene.
MANNA’s downstream partners, like Haywood Christian Ministries, are already bracing for a surge. The Waynesville-based pantry serves about 800 households, or between 1,000 and 2,000 people each month.
Executive Director Blake Hart said his team is keeping an eye on operations and may have to approach the situation on disaster footing, much as it did during the Coronavirus Pandemic and Helene, by expanding hours and distributing food to smaller local agencies.
“A lot of the food that we get and distribute is MANNA,” Hart said. “We are just ensuring that we have enough food on hand, as much as we can get. We’re open three days a week, basically for three or four hours each of those days, and it’s non-stop busyness.”
In Washington, D.C., legislators largely insulated from the effects of what is now the second-longest federal shutdown in history remain locked in an enduring stalemate.
Republicans, who hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, could end the shutdown by negotiating a continuing resolution or full budget that can secure enough bipartisan support to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
Democrats could end the shutdown by accepting Republican proposals to reduce federal health care spending — cuts that would double or triple health care coverage costs for people who receive federal subsidies on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
“I don’t agree with what they’re doing,” Wilds said. “None of them have to suffer like us because they have money in order to be able to pay for their groceries. They really don’t think about people like they’re supposed to. I think sometimes they don’t really have a heart to think about others at all.”
(SMN News Editor Kyle Perrotti contributed to this report.)
Find help
For more information about SNAP benefits and updates related to the federal shutdown, visit ncdhhs.gov/fns. Beneficiaries can also check their benefit balance using the ebtEDGE app or by calling the number on the back of the EBT card.
For information on where to find a food bank near you, visit MANNA FoodBank’s interactive food finder map at mannafoodbank.org/where-to-get-help.
