At a time when a record number of Massachusetts households say they don’t have enough to eat, local enrollment in the federal government’s main food assistance program is plummeting at nearly double the national rate.
The decline in people getting assistance is being caused in part by the state’s inability to handle the need, advocates said. More than three-quarters of calls concerning the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are being disconnected before a caseworker is free to answer, according to data obtained by the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a poverty law and policy center.
SNAP rolls are falling across the country — likely because of attempts to bring down payment error rates — but the 80,000-household decrease in Massachusetts, which includes nearly 50,000 children, is striking. And it includes eligible families who shouldn’t have been terminated.
Callers trying to reach the Department of Transitional Assistance to report changes or check on their recertification paperwork have had their benefits cut off, sometimes for months, because they couldn’t get through, advocates said.
“We have this fundamental expectation that help will be there for you when you need it,” said Victoria Negus, senior economic justice advocate at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “Right now when people are hungry and call the state … they get hung up on the vast majority of the time. So we have broken that contract.”
Others have waited on hold for up to three hours, or were unable to buy groceries after failing to connect with a caseworker.
The Department of Transitional Assistance is doing everything it can to help residents stay on SNAP, including hiring new caseworkers, enhancing training, and implementing an artificial intelligence tool to summarize calls, spokesperson Cecille Avila said in a statement.
“Because of policies passed by President Trump and Congress, millions of people across the country, including thousands in Massachusetts, are being kicked off SNAP,” she said.
Michele Haslett lost her customer service job last fall after complications from multiple sclerosis made it difficult to work. When her unemployment insurance ran out a few weeks ago, Haslett, 51, applied and was approved for emergency SNAP benefits. But she wasn’t issued a card.
She called the state at least 50 times over the course of a few days, she said, each time getting the same recording: “We are sorry, but due to high call volume, we cannot connect you to a case manager at this time.” And then the call ended.
“I might have been yelling at the phone,” said Haslett, who is in the process of moving from Freetown, where her house was just foreclosed on, to an apartment in Foxborough.
With the help of friends, Haslett managed to make eggs or bagels with peanut butter for her husband, who is diabetic and has brain damage from a series of strokes. But for three days, she said, all she had to eat was old Halloween candy.
The volume of calls has risen to an average of 20,000 calls a day in recent months, being answered by 645 SNAP caseworkers. These workers’ duties have also increased, with more intensive eligibility assessments, new work mandates in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill that require more screening, and additional verifications to bring down payment error rates, which will be factored into the amount states will soon have to contribute to SNAP benefits.
In November, the state also had to start cutting off benefits for up to roughly 10,000 legally present immigrants.
The Department of Transitional Assistance recently hired 76 new workers, but it wasn’t nearly enough to handle the increased complexity, and the growing need, anti-hunger advocates say.
And the situation could get worse. About 7,200 adults who are newly subject to strict work rules will lose SNAP this spring if they can’t reach DTA to prove they are eligible or if their paperwork isn’t processed in time, according to state data.
With prices for groceries, gas, and energy still soaring, 40 percent of Massachusetts households experienced food insecurity last year, according to a new report by Greater Boston Food Bank and Mass General Brigham — more than double the rate in 2019.
The precipitous drop in the SNAP caseload — from 670,000 households in January 2025 to 590,000 households just over a year later — normally only occurs when the economy is improving and need is waning, said Negus, of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
The state is trying to hire 42 more SNAP caseworkers, but the Law Reform Institute estimates 200 more are needed to improve access. Governor Maura Healey didn’t include extra funding for SNAP workers in her proposal for the next fiscal year, however, and the House is proposing cuts.
In November, when the new federal eligibility rules went into effect, the number of dropped calls jumped. Among the group of SNAP callers with the lowest level of need, including most able-bodied adults without young dependents, only 3,000 of 105,000 calls in January were connected to a human, the Law Reform Institute found.
SNAP caseworker Shaneice Hicks can’t see how many people are being cut off. But she knows calls have become more complex, with interviews now taking up to an hour per person, twice as long as in the past.
Hicks, who was on public assistance 19 years ago when her daughter was born, tries to be sensitive when she’s talking to clients, knowing how intrusive and humiliating it can be to ask for help. And the thought of people losing benefits because they can’t get through is heartbreaking.
“The most inhumane thing to do is deny people food,” said Hicks, a union steward in SEIU Local 509. “It makes me cry sometimes because I know what it is to not be able to feed your family.”
At The Open Door, a community food resource center in Essex County, SNAP recipients who can’t get through to the state are streaming into the client services center in Gloucester seeking help.
“We have been busier than we have been in a long time with people who are afraid, they’re scared, they’re upset because they can’t get through,” said president Julie LaFontaine, noting that Open Door’s food pantries are experiencing significant increases in need every year. “Nonprofits were never intended to carry the full weight of the federal nutrition program.”
Massachusetts is at risk for being dinged for its high SNAP payment error rate, which rose to 14.1 percent in fiscal year 2024 because of underpayments as well as overpayments, and came down to roughly 11 percent last year, which is about average. But that error rate, which is not affected by incorrect denials or terminations, could climb again if the SNAP worker-to-case ratio remains high and clients can’t get through to report changes.
Need has nearly doubled at the Gardening the Community farm store in Springfield, said Liz O’Gilvie, interim director of the food justice organization that sells locally grown, affordable produce. People are coming in to ask if they can work for food or if anything is about to go bad that they can have for free, she said.
At the same time, a federal grant was recently canceled that would have helped grow and manage additional crops, O’Gilvie said. Now she’s appealing to donors, cutting her already small salary, and trying to figure out what she can give to the hungry people who keep showing up at her door.
This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.