As they cope with a sudden halt in November benefits caused by the federal government shutdown, food stamp recipients are coming under more pressure as new rules kick into gear as part of a Republican effort to cut back the program.
In Hawaiʻi, advocates describe the rules as unrealistic for many to meet and fear a chilling effect that will deprive people of the food stamp program as well as other government benefits they are entitled to.
For thousands here who receive food stamps and want to keep them, rules that take effect Nov. 1 will require them to work an average of 80 hours a month. For the first time, work requirements will also extend to adults aged 55 to 64 and to the homeless, among others.
Another rule taking hold on Saturday will mean many residents who are not U.S. citizens will no longer be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the official name for the food stamps program.
New work requirements kick in Saturday for many people who rely on SNAP benefits.
People here under the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA, from the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands or Palau, will still be eligible for SNAP.
Both changes were written into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4.
Local advocates say many on food stamps already work part time or have good reason they cannot work — and the new rules will cause people to go hungry.
“People want to work if they can and these work requirements have shown time and again that they do not push people to finally just decide, ‘OK, I’ll work now because I have to,’ ” said Nate Hix, director of policy and advocacy at the Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute.
“These are ineffective requirements that end up at the end of the day just kicking people off the program,” Hix said, “which is largely the ultimate goal.”
No Longer Exempted
Not everyone will have to prove Saturday that they are working the minimum required hours.
People already receiving food stamps will have their work status reviewed when they renew their benefits, which happens annually for most people.
Currently, people between 18 to 54 must work to receive food stamps unless they are exempted for a variety of reasons. Those who are pregnant, disabled or are in drug or alcohol treatment are among the exemptions that will remain.
But under the new rules, recipients previously exempted — because of the barriers they might face to employment — who will now have to work also include not just homeless people, but veterans, those with dependents who are 14 or older, and young people between 18 and 24 who are transitioning out of foster care.
For Nyrah Sanelivi, the new requirement comes at a bad time because she is mentally disabled, she said.
Nyrah Sanelivi, right, relies on food stamps to feed herself and her dog. She said she’s not ready to work due to a mental disability. (Jeremy Hay/Civil Beat/2025)
“I’m not ready to go back to work yet, I’m not ready to face people,” she said, sitting with friends Tuesday in Downtown Honolulu’s Thomas Square.
Sanelivi, 35, said her life spiraled out of control when her parents died last year and she lost her job as a security guard at a Waikīkī hotel. Homeless for about a year, she said she relies on about $500 in monthly SNAP benefits to feed herself — mostly with instant ramen, she said — and her dog, Baby Girl.
She said she has a caseworker at the nonprofit social services provider Institute for Human Services and she may be able to get help enrolling in a job skills program. The work requirement can also be met with 80 hours a month participating in either community service or a training program.
For now, with November SNAP benefits on pause, Sanelivi said she will “dumpster dive.”
Thousands Will Have To Comply
Exact data isn’t available about how many of Hawaiʻi’s 168,000 food stamp recipients would have to meet the new work requirement, said Scott Morishige, administrator of the state Department of Human Services division that runs the SNAP program.
What is known, he said, is that Hawaiʻi has 16,000 SNAP recipients between 55 and 64 years old, and about 10,000 SNAP households with dependent children 14 or older.
Some overlap exists between the two categories, and some people will be eligible for an exemption due to physical or other circumstances including receiving disability payments, Morishige said.
“SNAP is a lifeline for young people to be able to get any sort of food assistance if they want to be independent of food banks or food pantries and drop-in centers.”
Carla Houser, executive director Residential Youth Services and Empowerment
But it’s clear that thousands will have to find work to comply with the new rules.
Among them are about 240 homeless adults between age 18 and 24 who receive food stamps, according to a database managed by Partners in Care, a coalition of nonprofits, government officials and community members that coordinates Oʻahu homeless services and funding.
“SNAP is a lifeline for young people to be able to get any sort of food assistance if they want to be independent of food banks or food pantries and drop-in centers,” said Carla Houser, executive director of a youth services provider, Residential Youth Services and Empowerment.
But homeless youth, she said, like others who live on the streets, will face particular challenges to meeting the work requirements.
Those include lack of access to reliable transportation, phone service or Wi-Fi — things essential to job hunts and maintaining employment. Not having a place to shower or appropriate work clothes, and being moved around by homeless sweeps are additional challenges.
“Then, if I do secure that job and that job has a uniform and certain paperwork that I’m supposed to keep safe with me, and I’m living unsheltered, how does that happen?” Houser asked. “I’ve seen young people get really great-paying jobs at hotels, and then lose their possessions in a beach cleanup.”
People who work with veterans say SNAP is critically important for many of their clients and that they, too, may have a hard time meeting the new requirements.
At the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program in Honolulu, run by Catholic Charities Hawaiʻi, veterans who aren’t tapping into SNAP benefits get help applying for them, said Dianne Lim-Tam, program administrator.
“For them to deal with those traumatic types of experiences, plus meet an 80-hour work requirement, that may not be really feasible for them.”
Dianne Lim-Tam
For many veterans, she said, “SNAP is basically what allows them to put food on the table.”
The work requirements, she said, will be an added burden for men and women dealing with mental health challenges including PTSD, physical disabilities and often unstable housing situations.
“For them to deal with those traumatic types of experiences, plus meet an 80-hour work requirement, that may not be really feasible for them,” she said.
Lim-Tam said information about how many of the Catholic Charities’ program’s veterans use SNAP wasn’t available. But at another of Oʻahu’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families programs, run by the nonprofit U.S. Vets at Barber’s Point, 389 veterans who enrolled this year rely on food stamps.
A ‘Gray Area’
Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, said she is particularly concerned about older food stamp recipients who may be challenged by the new requirements. Among them are people who suffer from health conditions they can’t prove are disabling, she said, who face age discrimination barriers in seeking jobs or live in rural areas where work might be difficult to find.
“There’s a lot of people that fall into this sort of gray area,” Spoto said.
Age is not the only gray area either.
Undocumented residents have never been able to sign up for SNAP, while citizens and lawful permanent residents remain eligible. But Spoto is worried about people here legally whose status falls outside allowed categories, making them no longer eligible for food stamps.
“So many just need a little bit of support, like so many others, to make sure that food is on the table as they make these huge transitions.”
Liza Ryan Gill, co-coordinator of the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights
That includes refugees — some from Ukraine — as well as people who have received asylum, are allowed to remain here because they experienced domestic violence by a U.S. citizen, or Vietnamese children born during the Vietnam war whose father was a U.S. citizen.
Advocates for immigrants slammed the changes.
“It is despicable that we would be taking food out of the hands of these families to feed their keiki,” said Liza Ryan Gill, co-coordinator of the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights. “You’re talking about folks who have gone through the process that we have asked them to go through. And now you’re punishing them.”
Many authorized immigrants who have come from traumatic backgrounds make use of SNAP “while they create new lives in America,” Gill said. “So many just need a little bit of support, like so many others, to make sure that food is on the table as they make these huge transitions.”
Spoto said that she also fears a “chilling effect,” in which people no longer eligible will avoid other services to which they’re still entitled, such as Meals on Wheels or free school lunch programs.
“With all of the rhetoric that’s flying around, and hearing about … citizens or legal residents getting held in detention centers or even deported,” she said, “there’s just a lot of fear of putting yourself out there and getting flagged on any kind of list, even if you are a legal resident.”
Civil Beat’s reporting on economic inequality is supported by the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation as part of its work to build equity for all through the CHANGE Framework; and by the Cooke Foundation.
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