Tameshia Williams, a single mom of four in Jackson who works as an elder aide, was kicked off Mississippi’s food stamp program in October despite being eligible. She says she was not informed of an upcoming appointment in the mail until after the appointment passed – a reality she worries will be the new normal for many families now that the federal government mandated more red tape for the program. 

“And then that puts you in a position where now you have to recertify completely, and you got to turn in extra paperwork, and now you have to wait til they work your case back up, and now you’re behind on getting food,” Williams said. 

Stricter work requirements for food stamps went into effect in November, putting 33,000 Mississippians at risk of losing their benefits, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The new work requirements were signed into law by President Donald Trump over the summer, alongside a major reduction in federal funding for food assistance. The cuts will hit Mississippi harder than many states because of the state’s high poverty and hunger rates. 

Mississippi will have to pay the price for its high error rates in eligibility determinations. That rate measures how accurately each state determines if a person is eligible to receive benefits, and states with error rates over 10% will have to pay the maximum 15% in benefits. That, in addition to administrative costs, means Mississippi will have to put up about $140 million in costs previously covered by the federal government to run its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the next two years. The new costs will drastically affect the state’s priorities, experts say. 

The temporary loss of food aid from the recent government shutdown – and its immediate effect on hunger – showed the country how many Americans live paycheck to paycheck and rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, said Theresa Lau, senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

“We saw a lot of families really struggling to make ends meet,” Lau said. “What we learned is you can’t ‘food bank’ your way out of this crisis.”

About 1 in 8 Mississippians — nearly 400,000 people  — receive food assistance through SNAP. More than 67% of participants are in households with children, and about 41% are in households with older adults or adults with a disability. In four Mississippi counties, over a third of residents rely on the program to purchase food, according to a report from WLBT. 

Mississippi is one of 15 states where SNAP expenditures will rise more than 300% as a result of the new law, according to the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. Twenty-three governors signed a letter to Congressional leadership stating they may be forced to end their state SNAP programs and outlining the harm this would do to their constituents, but Gov. Tate Reeves was not one of them. 

The Mississippi Department of Human Services, responsible for implementing the state’s SNAP program, is already bracing for this change. In September, Bob Anderson, head of the department, asked the Legislature for $15 million to cover the administrative portion of the program. Meanwhile, Anderson stayed quiet on child care requests despite more than 19,000 families having lost access to vouchers that made child care affordable since pandemic-era funds dried up. 

Last year, before mounting SNAP costs created greater strain on the state’s budget, Anderson asked the Legislature for $15 million to make a dent in the growing waitlist for child care vouchers. 

“SNAP currently serves around 350,000 Mississippians while child care (serves) around 24,000,” Chief Communications Officer Mark Jones told Mississippi Today. “Unfortunately, tough decisions must be made in preparing a budget.”

Experts expect these kinds of priority equations to become more common in the coming years. 

“That’s something we’re very worried about as states try to balance their budgets and have these millions of dollars they need to put up in order to get federal SNAP dollars,” Lau said.

Do work requirements work?

Work requirements already exist for the SNAP program, but the new federal law will expand them to people previously exempt: adults aged 55 to 65 and parents of children aged 14 and older. Everyone subject to the requirements will have to prove they are working, going to school or training at least 80 hours a month, or that they qualify for one of the exemptions. 

About three-quarters of SNAP beneficiaries work or are in between jobs, and another 20% are attending school, taking care of a family member, or have a health condition or disability, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Opponents of the reporting requirements say the policy doesn’t take into consideration the barriers keeping people from steady employment, such as low pay, discrimination, and lack of paid parental leave and affordable health insurance. 

“Work requirements don’t improve job outcomes, they just take food away from people,” said Lau. “In rural areas where jobs are very limited, work reporting requirements often force people to volunteer in order to qualify and essentially what that means is they’re providing unpaid labor.”

They are also costly to implement and often cause eligible beneficiaries to be kicked off because of administrative errors – something that already happens. 

Amaya Jones, a Jackson mom of two who works full-time at Kroger, said her caseworker recently told her she would have to submit SNAP paperwork via mail rather than online, only to later be told the office never received it. Jones said she believes they do things like this “to make it harder” for people to get assistance. 

“They want you to send things by mail, they claim they don’t get it, you go in and the people give you attitude,” Jones said. “It’s the communication. One minute you have this caseworker, and the next it’s another caseworker. You don’t know if you’re going or coming.”

When Mississippi’s Medicaid office began its “unwinding” process in 2023 – reviewing its rolls for the first time since the pandemic – 75% of the dropped enrollees lost coverage due to “procedural errors.” Now, experts think Mississippians will live to see a similar trend with the state’s SNAP program. 

The added burden of red tape will be exacerbated by aging technology that fails to support these administrative overhauls, resulting in qualified people losing access to food, explained Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Tax and Income Supports Division at the Urban Institute. 

“We’re up now against the fact that a lot of states have not really been able to fully upgrade their technology in a way that helps them manage things nimbly,” Waxman explained. “Replacing your state’s administrative systems is usually not high on any legislator’s list of priorities, but we do pay the price for that later.”

Between the immediate administrative costs and the roughly $120 million Mississippi will have to pitch in for benefits next fiscal year, Waxman said the state cannot rule out the possibility of having to close the program altogether. 

“We would expect to see very high levels of hardship, higher rates of poverty and poorer health outcomes,” said Waxman. “Local stores and producers would also experience negative consequences because there would be far fewer dollars available to buy their products. And the charitable food system wouldn’t be able to fully fill the gap, even for a short time.”

Not only are food banks not equipped to take up the slack for a scenario as catastrophic as the end of a state’s SNAP program, but they also can’t offer the freedom of choice or the selection of healthy meats and produce that supermarkets do. 

Schelika Chisolm runs Tupelo’s Salvation Army branch with her husband, Michael Chisolm. She’s organized the food in a way that people can shop for what they want, because she knows it boosts morale and makes life easier for people with allergies and parents of small children. 

“It’s about being able to feel like there’s something you can control and something you can make a choice about,” Chisholm said. “You feel happy to know that what you have in your cart is something your kids will eat.”

But she said she still can’t offer the variety of fresh and healthy foods that a supermarket does. Many food pantries don’t offer people any choice, giving out pre-packed boxes for efficiency. Chisolm said she hopes the SNAP program continues to be as accessible as possible for those trapped in cycles of poverty. 

“Those that are in need already have barriers they’re trying to overcome, whether it’s transportation, working a minimum wage job, trying to provide for multiple people in your home or taking care of an elderly parent – they already have barriers,” Chisholm said. “I hope we don’t make it less possible for them to complete the process.”