Overview
- The federal rule that took effect on June 1 requires many adults ages 18 to 64 in households without young children to work, volunteer, or train about 20 hours per week to keep CalFresh beyond three months, and eligibility is being checked at routine renewals so benefit cuts will happen on a rolling schedule that could start in October.
- Recipients who cannot meet the roughly 80-hours-per-month requirement or who do not qualify for exemptions face a three-month limit on benefits within a three-year period, and exemptions for some groups remain narrow in practice.
- San Francisco announced nearly $6 million in new grants to expand its CalFresh Community Works program with United Way and Project Open Hand to try to connect about 17,000 at-risk residents to qualifying activities and preserve their benefits.
- California’s CalFresh Employment and Training (CFET) program can increase short-term employment through work experience but is small, costly to scale, and HR1 provided no new federal funding for expansion, so state and local budgets would need to cover growth.
- Food banks and local groups report notices are already deterring some people from applying or renewing aid and predict higher demand for emergency food through the fall and holiday season as more recipients face benefit loss.