Food aid program restrictions prompt enrollment drop in Hamilton and surrounding counties

Enrollment in a federal food assistance program has dropped in Southeast Tennessee and across the state as fewer people qualify under stricter eligibility rules passed by Congress last summer. The trend is playing out across the country.

About 602,000 people in Tennessee received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in June, 94,000 fewer than in July 2025, when Congress passed the Republicans’ massive tax and spending bill, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Human Services, which administers the federal program.

In Hamilton County, the number of people who received benefits from the program dropped 14.6%, from about 34,500 in July 2025 to 29,500 in June 2026. There have been comparable decreases in surrounding Southeast Tennessee counties.

The 13.6% drop across the state is likely due to several factors, including the expansion of work requirements and confusion or misunderstanding that resulted from those changes, according to Anna Grace Dastugue, the director of nutrition policy at the Tennessee Justice Center, a healthcare and anti-hunger advocacy group.

“When you make all of these changes quickly to SNAP, it’s exactly what happens at an extended family, rumors spread and people are confused and you have people that are self-selecting out of the program because they think they’re no longer eligible,” Dastugue said by phone.

(READ MORE: Federal judge voids benefits restrictions on sugary foods in Tennessee, other states)

The federal food assistance program, previously known as food stamps and sometimes referred to by its acronym SNAP, has long required that able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 54 work, volunteer or complete job training for a minimum of 80 hours each month. It offered exemptions to individuals with children under 18, adults over the age of 55, young adults who had aged out of foster care, homeless people, veterans and other vulnerable groups.

Tennessee’s work requirements had been more restrictive than the previous federal standard, exempting people under 16 or over 59.

The new requirements, which went into effect in November 2025, repealed the work exemptions for parents with children older than 14 and for adults younger than 64 without children.

State Sen. Bo Watson, R-North Chattanooga, said he expected the dip in enrollment.

“I think when there’s any adjustment to a really large federal program, there is a period of time where folks have to adjust to that,” Watson said by phone, “and I think over time, those kind of individuals will work their way back into the system.”

People living in the country without legal authorization have never had access to the federal program. But refugees, people granted asylum and noncitizen residents who were victims of labor or sex trafficking, who were previously eligible, are now excluded from the program.

U.S. citizen children of unauthorized immigrants do qualify for food assistance even under the new rules, said Mandy Spears, executive vice president of the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan research organization based in Tennessee.

The sweeping changes, Spears said in an interview, may have caused some people who were previously applying for assistance for their eligible children to stop applying because of misunderstanding about new guidelines or fear of interacting with government services.

The drop, however, has not been a straight line since November. Detailed explanations for each dip or peak in the enrollment are not publicly available, and other factors, including seasonal fluctuations, may have contributed, Spears said in an email.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food aid program, said multiple factors could have contributed to the decline in enrollment.

“If a household is eligible, they receive the benefit. However, those same households are subject to recertification. Individuals might move to employment, become disinterested in participating or experience another change in household circumstances,” an emailed statement attributed to a spokesperson said. “Therefore, the number of individuals receiving benefits is constantly changing and is not representative of any one policy. For example, multiple states have seen declines far before the enactment of H.R. 1.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research group, estimated enrollment fell by more than 4.5 million people across the country since the bill’s passage, putting it at the lowest level in years.

(READ MORE: 100K Tennesseans lose federal food aid after One Big Beautiful Bill Act)

PAPERWORK

Andrea Whiddon and her two adult children have been living in a hotel room in Hamilton County for the past three months. Whiddon, 48, makes deliveries to pay the room bill, one of her sons works at a grocery store while she and her other son trade off staying home with their dog. The hotel doesn’t let pets be unattended, Whiddon said.

Her household was awarded $548 per month from the federal food assistance program from June through August. But the amount dropped off unexpectedly this month, she said, to $181.

She’s not sure why the amount dropped off, Whiddon said. She said she sends duplicates of all the required documentation to ensure timely approval.

“I turned in everything times two, and I do that on purpose because they say that they don’t have it,” Whiddon said by phone. “Some things I do turn in three times at the same time back to back, and I do it on purpose because they say they don’t have it.”

Whiddon said she doesn’t expect to see an explanation for why the benefits were cut off.

“They’re never going to show me that,” she said.

She’s relied on the program before, but since she lost her job and rent-to-own home for which repairs became too burdensome, it’s been a more significant part of her family’s finances. Because the hotel room’s fridge is small and the room doesn’t have a stove, Whiddon said she’s limited to buying products that don’t need to be cooked or can be microwaved.

The reduced benefit means she’ll have to shop at cheaper stores that provide discounts on nearly-expired items, she said.

Paying the daily room fee gives Whiddon more flexibility to move into a new home quickly once she gets another job, she said. She had been working from home in medical billing and has been doing daily delivery work to cover expenses while she’s in limbo. She said she’s scheduled to finish a test for other remote work soon and hopes that will give her enough steady income to move.

COST SHIFTS

The legislation also changed how the cost of the program is split between states and the federal government.

Historically, the Agriculture Department split the cost to administer the program with states. The new law shifts an additional 25% onto state budgets. Last year, Tennessee’s General Assembly approved more than $77 million in recurring payments to account for that cost increase.

Congress also approved a plan that would shift responsibility for paying direct benefit costs — the money that ends up on participants’ purchasing cards. The share of that cost that states will be on the hook for is tied to the rate at which states make incorrect distributions to participants. The higher the error rate, the larger the proportion states will pay.

In 2025, Tennessee made over- or under-payments 9.4% of the time, meaning the state will need to pay 10% of the overall benefit costs if the program will continue to operate at current levels.

States can choose error rates from the federal fiscal year 2025 or 2026.

States with error rates below 6% don’t have to pay a portion of the benefits. States with error rates between 6% and 8% must pay 5%, and states with error rates between 8% and 10% must pay 10%. Any state with an error rate over 10% is on the hook for 15% of the benefit costs.

Between 2024 and 2025, Tennessee’s payment error rate was virtually unchanged after coming down from a recent high of 12.5% in 2023, when incorrect payments spiked across the country during the pandemic.

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Watson, who chairs the legislature’s Finance Committee, said the state was working to bring down the error rate below 6%. Cutting program benefits was not on the table if it couldn’t, Watson said.

“Since we have to balance our budget, every dollar that we spend administrating a federal program is a dollar that we do not have available for a state program,” Watson said. “That means that we have to look at other areas where we might have to make reductions in order to cover this cost for this federal program.”

Error rates are only counted if a recipient is paid too much or too little of their benefit, Dastugue said, not if they are improperly denied. Complicated cases, in which participants’ income fluctuates frequently or the number of household members changes often, are more likely to contribute to the error rate, Dastugue said, and the state might target those for denial in an attempt to bring the rate down.

“We’re concerned that the state would be denying those individuals out of fear that their case could one day contribute to the state’s payment error rate,” Dastugue said.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Human Services, Danielle Cotton, said the department was internally reviewing a list of questions sent by a reporter but did not respond by deadline.

“I don’t think there is any strategy on the state’s part to unfairly manipulate the system,” Watson said. “I think the state is trying to get it right because we’re administrators of the program and I don’t think the state is utilizing any incentive to not provide people the benefit that they are eligible for.”

Contact Report for America corps member Jules Feeney at jfeeney@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.