A change buried in this year’s federal budget law is quietly cutting food-stamp benefits for households that cannot document what they pay to keep the lights and heat on. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill, only Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program households that include someone age 60 or older or a person with a disability automatically keep the full utility deduction that lifts monthly benefits. Every other household must now prove its actual heating and cooling costs, and roughly 600,000 households are projected to lose about $100 a month because of it.
How the Standard Utility Allowance shift lowers benefits
SNAP benefits are calculated after subtracting certain living costs from a household’s income, and utilities are one of the largest of those deductions. For years, a household that received even a token payment from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program could claim the full Standard Utility Allowance — a fixed estimate of heating and cooling costs — without producing a single bill. That shortcut, long known as “heat and eat,” inflated the utility deduction and, with it, the monthly benefit for millions of participants who paid little or nothing directly.
The new law ends that automatic link for most households. The rule took effect on November 1, 2025, and the practical result is a smaller deduction, which means higher countable income and a lower benefit. Households without a member who is elderly or disabled can still claim the heating-and-cooling allowance, but only by showing they actually pay those costs separately from their rent — the burden of proof now sits with the household rather than being granted automatically.
The allowance matters because of where it lands in the formula. The Standard Utility Allowance feeds SNAP’s excess shelter deduction, which lets a household subtract shelter and utility costs that exceed half of its income after other deductions are applied. For most households that shelter deduction is capped, but households with an elderly or disabled member face no cap at all — so the same carve-out that preserves automatic utility qualification also lets those households deduct their full housing burden. When a working-age household loses the standard allowance, its countable shelter costs shrink, its net income rises, and the benefit calculated from that income falls, often by the roughly $100 a month analysts project.
Federal guidance draws the line the same way. USDA guidance on energy-assistance payments confirms that automatic qualification through a nominal LIHEAP benefit now flows only to households with an elderly or disabled member, and that everyone else must substantiate their utility expenses to keep the allowance. For a household that assumed the deduction would carry over untouched, the first sign of the change is often a benefit notice showing fewer dollars for the month.
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Who keeps the automatic allowance and who loses it
The carve-out is narrow and specific. A household qualifies for automatic treatment only if at least one member is 60 or older or has a disability as SNAP defines it. A working-age couple, a single adult, or a family of younger renters no longer gets the shortcut, even when their utility costs are real and substantial, unless they assemble the documentation to prove them. The change turns a paperwork formality into a condition that directly sets the size of the monthly benefit.
For households that cannot easily produce separate utility statements — renters whose heat is bundled into the rent, people who move frequently, or those without organized records — the lost deduction converts straight into fewer grocery dollars. An estimate of the change puts the typical reduction near $100 a month, a serious cut for a program whose average benefit runs only a few hundred dollars per person. Roughly 600,000 households are projected to feel it, concentrated in states that had used the LIHEAP mechanism most aggressively.
The dollar figures are estimates, not final tallies, because the real effect depends on how many households manage to document their costs and keep the allowance. That uncertainty is part of the problem for the people affected: a benefit that once arrived automatically now hinges on whether a household understands the new rule and can satisfy it before the next recertification.
Older households are protected, but not untouched
The law shields households with an elderly or disabled member from this particular cut, a recognition that fixed-income seniors have the least slack to absorb a smaller benefit. That protection is genuine, and it is why the headline change spares much of the older-adult population SNAP serves — a retiree living alone at 68, or a couple in their 70s, keeps the automatic allowance without new paperwork.
The same budget law, however, tightens SNAP in other ways that reach older Americans indirectly, and a separate federal directive stripped internet service out of the utility figures states use, trimming the allowance for everyone regardless of age. The combined effect is a program that now demands more documentation and pays out smaller deductions, so a household that skips the paperwork or misreads the new rules can watch its benefit fall even though its actual bills never changed. For families already stretching a fixed budget across rent, utilities, and food, that quiet erosion is the part that stings.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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