Our Communities

 

Our Communities

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Everything You wanted to Know about SNAP & Medicare

 

 A Media Round-table with Mayor Mamdani on SNAP and Medicaid

 

 

There is loss all around us and there are also ways to stem the flow.

Twelve reporters from the ethnic media – including me – had a sit down conference with Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the Blue Room of City Hall. The Mayor spoke about the new work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits which went into effect on March 1, and since then, nearly 27,000 New Yorkers have lost their benefits.

 

Even such a daunting issue he took on with his trademark can-do smile as he looked around the table . “Thank you for the partnership that you provide in reaching out to New Yorkers,” he said. “Since SNAP work requirements have gone into effect, close to 30,000 New Yorkers have lost their SNAP benefits. We know that that has an incredible consequence, especially here in the most expensive city in the United States of America. And we know that when we are looking forward to January 1st, what we will find is at least 900,000 New Yorkers being at risk of losing their health insurance. And this is something that is troubling to the entire city, and we also know that it will disproportionately impact immigrants and communities of color across our five boroughs.”

 

The Mamdani Administration has launched the Health and Affordability Resource Teams, otherwise known as Heart Teams. These will be tasked with helping New Yorkers get back on SNAP and Medicaid and helping them navigate the new requirements that they are fixing. The new website at nyc.gov/workrules will be a one-stop shop for all the information New Yorkers need on navigating these new rule changes. He added, “Now we need help above all in getting this message out to New Yorkers to ensure that those who are at risk know how they can retain their benefits, and those who have questions know where they can go to have them answered.”

This is causing problems to many New Yorkers, but the good news is that those who lost their SNAP benefits this summer can re-enroll. Mamdani has  launched a citywide outreach effort to help New Yorkers maintain access to SNAP benefits. The Mamdani administration is also broadening its outreach in anticipation of the expansion of work requirements for Medicaid, which take effect on January 1, 2027, and will put approximately 900,000 New York City residents at risk of losing their health insurance.

 

 

Now, with the re-enrollment window opening, the administration is expanding community-based outreach to reach approximately 26,500 New Yorkers who lost SNAP benefits under the expanded federal work requirements, which took effect on March 1, 2026.

 

On March 1, as part of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the federal government expanded SNAP work requirements for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs). As a result, thousands of New Yorkers who were previously exempt must now meet federal work requirements to maintain their benefits.

Affected SNAP recipients can meet the requirements by:

 

• • Working at least 20 hours per week, or 80 hours per month.

 

• • Participating in an approved job training or education program for at least 20 hours per week, or 80 hours per month.

 

• • Volunteering with an approved organization for the required number of hours based on their SNAP benefit amount.

 

• • Participating in other qualifying activities, including approved job search activities.

Beginning in June, newly affected recipients began losing benefits under the federal government’s “three-strike” policy, which reduces or terminates SNAP benefits after three months of noncompliance.

 

 

Deputy Mayor Taylor spoke about the Health and Affordability Resource Team:” These are dozens and dozens of community health workers, insurance enrollers, certified application counselors who will be sitting shoulder to shoulder with New Yorkers, helping them to do the work requirements, the medical frailty at destinations, the biannual recertifications.

 

But it’s more than just getting ourselves ready at the health department. We also have to get our city ready as well. We’ve reached out to over 35,000 clinicians. These are physicians like myself, nurses, social workers to help make sure they’re armed and ready to keep their patients covered. We’ve also worked with over 60,000 community-based organizations and faith-based organizations. And we launched a brand new phone number 866 insured. That’s 866 I N S U R E D that will go along with the brand new website, so we’re here to help New Yorkers. We have your back, and we will help to get through this.”

 

The heart teams speak up to 13 different languages and they’re specifically being deployed to neighborhoods where, as per the assessments of the New York State Department of Health, they will see the highest impact. So, in the very neighborhoods where people are most at risk, there will be teams that are multilingual, able to make this kind of communication.

 

Regarding SNAP, Scott French, the administrator of Human Resources Administration, explained how the city process SNAP benefits for New Yorkers. The city has worked to protect New Yorkers at risk of using SNAP: “The city has created volunteer and training opportunities in partnership with more than 200 community-based organizations. Our outreach campaign has been both targeted and expansive. We worked closely with the mayor’s public engagement unit to directly call more than 40,000 at-risk New Yorkers and knock on 10,000 doors. My agency conducted webinars for more than 6,500 community representatives to multiply the reach of our efforts. We have been visible, we have been creative, and we have been relentless. Around 2,500 of those who lost SNAP are already re-enrolled or can re-apply. The most important message for New Yorkers is if you or anyone you know has questions about their SNAP benefits, please call 718 SNAP now.”

 

 

Speaking about the losses, Mamdani noted, “These kinds of federal cuts are not just devastating for individual New Yorkers, they are also devastating so many of the institutions that New Yorkers rely on, like bodegas as well as grocery stores. We also see a disproportionate impact in the Bronx in terms of what these SNAP cuts are going to do to the ability for these kinds of institutions to keep functioning in the way they are right now.  For those who cannot get back into Medicaid, there are other NYC programs they can get enrolled into, like NYC Cares.  The administration is also committed to finding jobs for New Yorkers and setting up job centers where they can walk in and get engagement on their resumes.”

The Mayor emphasized: “The reason we were able to save 65% of the New Yorkers we thought were at risk, 220,000 New Yorkers, was because we started early. These teams are going in in advance of January 1. So, we don’t want to wait for when the Medicaid cuts come. We want to be on top of it. We want any New Yorker that we can keep them on their insurance, or we can keep them being eligible for SNAP, that is a healthier New Yorker who is better prepared for life in the city.

The City is also a major employer in this city, employing more than 300,000 New Yorkers. Some New Yorkers have gone in there and actually then been interviewed on site and then gone on to work for city government.  

Mamdani added, “What we have found time and again is the underlying interest is to remove people from the things that can keep them healthy and that can keep them safe. The idea of success from this is a smaller Medicaid program, a smaller SNAP program. That is the issue that we have with these programs. It’s not that they could help people get to work. It’s that what they’re really looking to do is to find ways for disqualifying people from receiving these kinds of benefits. So, we absolutely are looking to connect New Yorkers with jobs. And what we’ve also found is there are too many New Yorkers who fall through the cracks when a federal government says, ‘Remember the one application you needed. Now you need 10 applications.’ That’s our concern.

A lot of it has also been with an emphasis on community-based organizations. Before I was the mayor, before I was an assembly member, I worked at a community-based organization in Jackson Heights in Richmond Hill, and that was a place where people who were uncomfortable going to government were comfortable coming to us. And I know that there are so many organizations who, because of language fluency, cultural fluency,  have the trust of people in their neighborhood, and they have been incredible partners in this work.”

A reporter asked Mayor Mamdani if the city will be receiving any support from the state and federal government for this initiative. He said, “We are not receiving any support from the federal government. What we are receiving instead, to be frank, is cruelty from federal policies. We’re talking about living in the most expensive city in the United States of America, a city where New Yorkers already cite grocery prices and health care as some of their top concerns of cost of living, and what federal policy is doing is now making it harder for them to afford their groceries, harder for them to afford health insurance, and we know that this is a city that moves at the speed of light, and New Yorkers are trying to just keep up with their day to day life.

 

Our job now is to explain these policies to New Yorkers and to work with them so that we can provide them with the greatest amount of support possible. I do want to credit New York State for their assistance in policy and because of the New York State Department of Health’s assessments of the risk status of certain neighborhoods.”

Finally, Mayor Mamdani was asked, how the elections were going to affect the situation. He said, “I am hopeful about the elections because I think that Americans are tired of a cost of living crisis that has only been exacerbated by federal policy over these last many months, and most people feel like politics is something that they don’t have the time to even afford to worry about. And yet, what they found is that federal policy has made so many of their measures of their day-to-day life more expensive. And what we’re talking about here is fighting the possibility of those same groceries, that same health insurance becoming more expensive.

 

Here in New York City, we’re focused on making these kinds of things cheaper. Here in New York City, we’re focused on building out the first city-run grocery stores where New Yorkers could go in there and find an actual discount on a basket of essential goods. And yet, what we’re seeing with federal policy is an attempt to make what is an already unbearable situation even more difficult. I’m hopeful that we see Americans take a very different path in the weeks to come.”