Months after Congress enacted sweeping changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the number of Mainers receiving benefits has plummeted by more than 11,000, according to state officials.

The law enacted last summer shifted more costs to states, slashed benefits to certain groups of people and ended exemptions to work requirements for many others.

Last August, about 170,000 Mainers were receiving SNAP benefits. That number dropped by nearly 11,500 by March, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s not because those people are no longer hungry,” said Alex Carter, a policy advocate with Maine Equal Justice, a nonprofit civil legal aid and economic justice organization. “It’s likely people who are still income eligible for and need food assistance, but are having a hard time complying with the new regulations.”

Ian Yaffe, director of Maine’s Office for Family Independence, which runs the state’s SNAP program, said changes from the new law led to the enrollment decline.

The federal budget bill, approved by Congress last summer, slashes some or all benefits for certain groups — including veterans, homeless people and survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking — by removing exemptions to the 80-hour-a-month work requirement for able-bodied adults. The law also ended exemptions for many other adults, including older people up to age 65 and parents of children 14 and older.

State officials have said an estimated 30,000 Mainers who received SNAP but didn’t previously have work requirements would have to meet them in order to receive assistance.

Rural areas of Maine — where food insecurity rates are the highest and more people tend to rely on SNAP — are being hit especially hard by the changes, according to hunger prevention advocates. Work exemptions were taken away for rural areas with low employment opportunities as part of the changes, leaving people scrambling to figure out how to find work or places to volunteer within hours of their homes, Carter said.

“People in rural Maine are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to complying with the work requirements,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of people fall through the cracks.”

Before the changes, roughly 42 million people in the United States were using SNAP, a program long considered the most effective way to reduce food insecurity. Enrollment has already declined by about 3 million nationally since the new rules went into effect last summer, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis.

Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the food assistance team at CBPP, said the country is “starting to see historic drops in SNAP participation” so he expects the numbers will fall even more in coming years.

“This is a story that’s still unfolding,” he said.

A ‘CONFUSING’ TIME

Megan Newsome, a single mother and full-time student from Lisbon, paid close attention to discussions about the SNAP changes and traveled twice to Washington with the Maine State Parent Ambassadors to fight them.

She said she was still surprised when the SNAP benefits she relies on to feed herself and her 2-year-old son dropped by $102 a month. Confused, she called DHHS and was told the one-time financial aid reimbursement she receives from her college now counts as income.

Newsome, 29, said her SNAP benefits used to cover her grocery bills, but she’s now dipping into a temporary assistance benefit she also receives that helps pay for diapers to pay for food instead.

Other people she knows were unaware the changes were coming and have no backup plan.

“It’s frustrating and disgusting to hear that a lot of families are losing their federal benefits,” she said. “It makes me sad for them.”

Allina Diaz, an organizing director at Maine Equal Justice who works with people living in poverty, said this has been a “very confusing time for people in Maine” and has left them wondering if their benefits will show up the next month.

“People are worried,” she said.

For months, staff at the nonprofit have been hearing from SNAP recipients about the stressful impact of the changes as they try to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living, Carter said. They’re also hearing stories of people who have decided to stop participating in SNAP before they get a notice they’re not eligible because “they’re so overwhelmed,” Carter said.

“That anxiety and overwhelm is really permeating the experiences and stories being told to us,” she said.

Increasingly, people are turning to local food pantries across Maine to help fill the gaps, said Robin McCarthy, chief advancement officer for Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn. Pantries in the food bank’s network of 600 local programs reported a 10% increase in patrons during the first three months of the year and many are bracing for even larger increases, McCarthy said.

McCarthy said Good Shepherd is already hearing about difficult decisions food pantry directors are making as they shift from an abundance mindset to one of scarcity because of higher demand. For some, that means opening less often or limiting how much food people can take to make sure there is enough for everyone.

At the food pantry run by Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program in Brunswick, demand for assistance was already rising before the SNAP changes, but the pace has picked up, according to program director Heather Arvidson.

Last year, the pantry recorded 18,895 visits, a 43% increase from fiscal year 2024. It was only 400 shy of that number by the end of April, with two months left to go in the current fiscal year, Arvidson said.

She said the program is determined to meet the demand, “but food pantries can’t endlessly grow to meet growing need.”

ADDRESSING PAYMENT ERRORS

While states implemented the eligibility changes last year, the shifting of more administrative costs from the federal government to states will ramp up this fall, said Llobrera, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

States will have to pay a larger share of costs based on the payment error rate, which means they get less money for making mistakes in the amount that SNAP benefits recipients receive. If someone receives more or less money than they are eligible for, it counts against the state agency.

“States are doing whatever they can to reduce the payment error rate,” Llobrera said. “But there’s no corresponding incentive for states to make sure access to the program doesn’t suffer.”

The new law mandates that states reduce their payment error rates to below 6%, and Maine’s is currently 10.6%. A high error rate could cost Maine up to $53 million per year, according to a state estimate released last year.

Lindsay Hammes, a Maine DHHS spokesperson, said the agency plans to spend $4.7 million later this year to hire 40 workers whose job will be to work on reducing the payment error rate.

Hammes said other initiatives by DHHS include “targeted reminders to households about reporting requirements, as unintentional client errors in reporting are the most common cause of SNAP payment errors in Maine.”

When people apply for SNAP, staff will do more reviews of what information applicants need to give to the agency to ensure they are receiving the correct benefit, Hammes said. The agency also plans to reduce errors by improving its verification systems for income, housing and utilities, she said.

Since last fall, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention has subcontracted with the state’s Office of Family Independence to offer a SNAP outreach program to help people accurately fill out applications.

Arvidson said filling out applications and renewals and providing all of the necessary documentation can be daunting and confusing, especially when people are trying to figure out whether they have to follow work requirements.

“It feels like there’s so many changes and I don’t think anyone fully comprehends what’s going on,” she said. “DHHS does its best in Maine to educate where they can, but they’re also being thrown curveballs. It’s tricky for anyone to have a firm grasp on what’s happening.”