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In rural Hardy County, housing prices are skyrocketing. Electricity bills are surging. A homeless encampment along the river is growing.
Shari Stephens, director of the county’s family resource center, says things are the toughest she’s ever seen.
“I’ve had more people come in in the past three months for food assistance than I had probably in the last prior year,” Stephens said.
But for people struggling to get by, those times could get harder in the next few years. A major piece of federal legislation to enact President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda would cut $230 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years.
The bill cuts food assistance for thousands of West Virginians as part of an effort to offset tax cuts for the rich.
In Summers County, Felisha Hartwell, director of the REACCH Family Resource Center, said a lot of families she works with are at low paying jobs.
“If they’re eligible for SNAP, that’s a little bit of a break for them,” she said. “But now if they’re going to lose, that’s really disheartening for people who are working and trying to do better.”
The cuts will take effect in several ways. Nationwide work requirements will be instituted for those receiving food stamps. And for the first time since the program’s creation, states will be required to pay portions of the cost based on the error rate, which is the amount of over or under payments of benefits by the state.
Earlier estimates of the bill showed almost 30,000 West Virginia families with children could lose their food assistance.
Sen. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va., was adamant that those who lose assistance are “the people that don’t deserve a benefit to begin with.”
Capito said the changes would encourage states to move to get their rates of over and under payment of benefits to below 6%, which is the threshold where the federal government will pay the entire cost. States are ultimately responsible for how food stamps get doled out.
However, in the package she ultimately voted for, states with extraordinarily high errors will have implementation delayed by a couple of years – a deal that was cut to get the final votes necessary.
The SNAP portion of the bill ran through the Senate agriculture committee, which Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va. serves on. In a statement following Tuesday’s vote, Justice said the funding bill will “establish common sense reforms to our social programs.”
Jessica Legg, director of the Mason County Family Resource Center, said almost all the families her centers serve are on food stamps, which allows her organization to fill other needs like clothing and hygiene products. But if those families need food because they lost their assistance, that could cause problems.
“I really just don’t know what we will do, because we run pretty thin as it is now,” she said.
With the latest numbers, the state would have to spend roughly $50 million to maintain food benefits for people, starting in the 2028 budget year.
West Virginia political leaders have not said whether they will pay for this or make cuts. Ann Ali, spokesperson for House Speaker Roger Hanshaw said they’re still “monitoring the budget reconciliation process.”
But during the regular session, lawmakers showed how they would handle an additional cost by the federal government. When federal lawmakers were discussing changing funding formulas for Medicaid, West Virginia Republicans briefly flirted with a proposal to kick thousands of people off their insurance to avoid paying it.
For people like Amy Jo Hutchinson, West Virginia campaign director of MomsRising, an organization dedicated to economic and women’s issues, cuts to food stamps are not just numbers on a ledger. They’re people like her – she received SNAP while raising two daughters and working as a HeadStart teacher.
“The one thing that kept my family going and kept me out of trouble for neglect, and with CPS was the safety net programs,” she said. “If it wasn’t for SNAP, I don’t know what my family would have done for food.”
Reach reporter Henry Culvyhouse at henryculvyhouse@mountainstatespotlight.org
