‘My Shelves Are Very Empty’: How a Year of SNAP Cuts Is Pressuring the Food System

Two and a half years ago, Helen Swire Comer quit her job as a bank manager to take care of her parents full-time. She’d worked since she was 15 years old and planned to continue working into her 70s.

But her parents required around-the-clock care, and it took her a year into caring for them before she was able to sleep through the night, making other employment nearly impossible.

She came to rely on a little under $400 a month through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), making her one of tens of millions of Americans who use a food assistance system that has found itself under siege over the past year.