Scarlett Ahmed has started counting the number of people sleeping outside the Queens Career Center in New York City when she arrives at work in the morning.
“It was already bad,” she said. “But this? This will just add to it.”
Ahmed, a career center supervisor and an executive board member of New York’s Public Employees Federation, is referring to the devastating disruption in benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The break in benefits—resulting from the longest federal government shutdown on record—has a seismic impact, reaching even programs and departments