SNAP Recipients Wait Six Months For Benefits as Delays Chaos Continues

Desperate families in Tennessee have told Newsweek they are struggling to put food on the table as SNAP application approvals continue to be delayed.

Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the southern state have faced months-long waits for their benefits to be approved after the installation of a new system to process applications at the state's Department of Human Services (DHS).

The federal government mandates that all SNAP applications must be approved or denied within 30 days. Newsweek has previously reported that throughout the summer of 2023, workers at the DHS transitioned to a new system for processing applications which has been blamed for the hold-up.

The DHS has confirmed the delays, with a spokesperson for the department previously telling Newsweek on February 3 that approximately 20,000 applications older than 30 days are still pending. The agency said that as of the same date, 15,693 applicants had been contacted.

Newsweek has contacted the DHS in Tennessee for comment via email outside of normal working hours.

Despite the department's efforts to fix the chaos, excessive wait times are impacting the livelihoods of some of Tennessee's most vulnerable people. SNAP benefits are paid out to low or no-income households and those with disabilities.

Numerous people who have contacted Newsweek in the last week have said they are desperate, with some being forced to use food banks to get by.

Latoya McDuffie, a mother of two who has been homeless for the last six months, said her benefits were cut off in the summer of 2023. She has been struggling to find employment and has reported the severity of her situation to the relevant offices, but still hasn't been able to get her benefits approved.

"I love my children and only want the best for my babies," she told Newsweek. "But how am I to provide when nobody will hire me and the food stamp office won't even help out with anything?"

DHS Commissioner Clarence Clark has said the state government agency is hoping to bring the delays down to under 60 days by the middle of February. "I'm very confident we are heading in the direction that we will fix this problem very very soon," Carter said.

Crystal Shipley lost her SNAP benefits on November 8, and put in another application the following day. She had a phone interview on January 11, meaning she waited 64 days for her application to be processed. Following this, she received a partial payment.

But Shipley said her benefits were then stopped again on January 30 "for no reason." She told Newsweek that she has been trying to do whatever possible to feed her two children, who are six and seven years old, but says they are "barely making it" through.

In a previous statement, a DHS spokesperson described the effort to deal with the backlog as an "all-hands-on-deck approach." "We have made significant progress and we will continue to make improvements to ensure that our customers receive their benefits as timely as possible," the agency told Newsweek.

But other SNAP applicants have said the new system seems to have made the process worse. The previous application route had been in place since 1992.

One applicant, who identified herself only by the name Malinda, told Newsweek that she "never received a call" from the DHS on the day her recertification interview was due to take place. While she has since been interviewed, her EBT card has not been loaded. She said she has been to her local office numerous times, but said "no one there can give anyone any usual information or they tell you whatever they think will satisfy you and get you out the door."

She said: "I understand problems occur when dealing with a new system but that was in July, so I would think things would improve but it seems it's only gotten worse."

"The old process was simple, they called you and took care of everything during that call, then [they] would send a notification of approval," she said. "One worker I spoke to when my problems started told me that the new process is one worker makes the call and does the interview, then it's passed on to another worker to verify and process."

Others are even struggling to get to the interview stage, with scheduled phone calls being missed.

Taylor Steele told Newsweek that she was scheduled to have her renewal interview, but never received the call and has been in a back-and-forth situation ever since, visiting her local office on numerous occasions. She has been left not knowing the status of her application or whether she needs to apply again.