By Jordan DelFiugo, Belmont Voice correspondent
On a sunny afternoon, the Belmont Farmers’ Market hums as neighbors catch up and reach across boxes of ripe tomatoes and Honeycrisp apples. Shoppers weave through rows of white tents, sampling cheese from toothpicks and sipping apple cider. Many pay using small red tokens from the market’s SNAP matching program, which gives them up to $25 in extra spending money each week on top of their food assistance benefits.
But the market closes Oct. 29, and the nearly 300 shoppers who use the program each season must find other ways to stretch their grocery budgets.
“It ends up being more complicated than you would want it to be,” said Jay Winshall, a longtime shopper who receives SNAP and Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) benefits. “There’s all these programs, and you have to get organized around them like ‘OK, I’m going to go here, I’m going to try and do this’… During the summer, you have the markets, which I very much enjoy, but when you hit the end of the season, it’s harder to find places.”
Winshall spoke at the Belmont Food Collaborative’s “Hunger in Belmont” forum at Belmont High School recently, where local advocates gathered to discuss ways to address food insecurity in town.
Amy Kirsch co-founded Belmont Helps, a volunteer group that connects residents in crisis with emergency help. She said she hoped the event would draw more attention to the problem.
“I think people have this idea that because we live in a very wealthy area, there isn’t as much food insecurity here,” Kirsch said. “It can be hard for people to even imagine it.”
Last month, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance reported that 966 Belmont residents, about 3% of the town’s population, rely on SNAP benefits. The number has fallen in recent years, but farmers’ market manager Hal Shubin said the decrease does not necessarily mean fewer people need help.
“It’s not because people are suddenly flush with cash and don’t need the benefits anymore,” Shubin said. “What we’re hearing from shoppers is simply, ‘No one is answering the phones.’ People try to call these food assistance offices, and the system hangs up on them after a while, and they are not able to get through and renew or update their benefits.”
In May, The Boston Globe reported the state’s SNAP phone lines disconnected more than three-quarters of the calls before a caseworker answered.
SNAP eligibility has also tightened. In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which expanded work requirements and limited benefits for some noncitizens, including refugees and people granted asylum.
In Massachusetts, the Department of Transitional Assistance began applying some of those changes in November 2025, requiring more adults to work, volunteer, or enroll in job training to keep their benefits. A study from the Greater Boston Food Bank found that across the commonwealth, 40% of households experienced food insecurity during the last year.
“We have a large number of people who moved here seeking asylum, and they’ve mostly moved through support at the different houses of worship,” said Laurie Graham, director of the Belmont Food Pantry.
In Belmont, a large majority of SNAP recipients are seniors, many of whom have lived in town for generations. Graham noted that for several people, the struggle to bounce back from pandemic-related job loss has been a driving factor in their insecurity.
“The amount of people that started coming when COVID hit has not stopped, and it keeps growing. Almost all of it has to do with a lack of work, or a lack of work that pays enough,” Graham said. “[People] are at a point where even if they own the home they grew up in, that their grandma and grandpa built, they can’t afford to move, because they can’t afford to fix the house enough to sell it.”
About one-third of Belmont’s SNAP recipients are children under 18.
“We see a lot of families with young children come by the pantry,” Graham said. “We try to have baby food, and things that people can’t use SNAP benefits for, like household goods and cleaning supplies.”
Much of the forum focused on finding accessible, sustainable solutions. The farmers’ market is seasonal, and the pantry opens for just three one-hour sessions a month, limiting how often residents can actually pick up food, especially if they work nights and weekends.
Massachusetts provides free breakfast and lunch to all public school students, but when school is out, families must look for other ways to cover those meals.
At the forum, speakers pointed to SUN Bucks, a program that provides eligible families with $120 per child to help pay for groceries during the summer.
To offer another year-round option, Belmont resident Amber Porter plans to open a community fridge and freezer at the First Church Unitarian Universalist in Belmont, allowing residents to take food at any time without registering or proving financial need.
“If you’re someone who is working really hard, you’re stretching your budget, you’re using all these resources, this is something that you can use to fill in those gaps where it might be more difficult,” Porter said. “The motto is ‘take what you need, give what you can.’”
The community fridge is awaiting approval for construction as officials review food safety and security measures, Porter said. She expects approval next month.
As local organizations work to expand access to food, Kirsch said they must continue adapting their approaches to meet residents’ changing needs.
“We should always be open to more creative ways to help people. There’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all solution,” Kirsch said. “I just hope that as a community we can adapt and help people as things change and people’s needs change.”
This story was written by a journalism student in BU’s Newsroom program, a partnership between the university, The Belmont Voice, and other news organizations in the Boston area.
