Christine Quinn in ‘fight mode’ over SNAP benefits delay

When President Trump announced his unprecedented move to end emergency funds for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the federal shutdown last week, Christine Quinn immediately began organizing, pressuring elected officials to secure funding and beginning an emergency fund raising drive at her non-profit “Win.” 

Once the city’s second most powerful politician, Quinn has not participated in electoral politics since her City Council Speaker term and failed mayoral bid more than a decade ago. However, she continues to be a vocal advocate in New York City policy, leading New York’s largest provider of shelter and supportive housing for homeless families, and a “knowledgeable spectator” in the city’s politics, she told City & State. 

Quinn sat down with City & State to discuss her advocacy push against the SNAP cuts, her thoughts on the tightening City Council speaker race, and her predictions for this year’s pivotal Somos conference. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As federal food assistance benefits were set to shut off on Saturday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced over $100 million in state funds to help cover meals for the three million impacted New Yorkers. Some groups called on Hochul to go further and use state dollars to directly fund SNAP for the month of November. Is Hochul doing enough?

First of all, I want to applaud the governor for taking .. immediate and decisive action and giving out additional funds to food banks and soup kitchens, and also for her creativity and engaging schools to give out, with her funding, extra meals to students whose families were on SNAP. Clearly, the governor knows, we all know this is a first step. If this crisis, this Trump created crisis, continues, more will have to be done. I have no doubt that the governor will step up and do what is needed to be done. She's shown that that is what she's doing. But make no mistake, the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, they have a fund which they could use to keep SNAP benefits going in the shutdown of the first Trump administration, the longest shutdown in the history of the country … This isn't an automatic result of a shutdown, it is a decision made by the president to hurt people, to hurt children, to hurt senior citizens. 

So I thank the governor, I thank the mayor for the small amount of money he put forward, and urge everyone to do more when we know that that is needed, and I have great faith that the governor will. At Win, 98% of our clients are on SNAP, it's the equivalent of $1.7 million a month, $400,000 a week. So in addition to pushing our elected leaders to step up to the plate and add funds and trying to keep pressure on Washington so they will end this madness, we also have begun an emergency fund raising drive to raise additional resources from our supporters so that we can give our clients gift cards, if you will, that they can use to buy groceries as this goes on, if this goes on. We started on Tuesday, we are already at around $600,000.

About 154,000 New York City students were homeless last year, which was a record number. Democratic nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani has focused much of his campaign on affordability, but he has not released much policy proposals related to education. Is there anything that the next mayor can do to not only protect New Yorkers when it comes to homelessness and affordability, but also specifically New York students?

First of all, one in eight students are unhoused. That number equals the Miami School District, just to put it in perspective. Yet, we don't even have a deputy chancellor focused exclusively on unhoused children. That's an easy thing to fix right away. Furthermore, we have some good programs right now in the Department of Education. We have Bridging the Gap social workers, and … some of those [are] assigned to the schools in the city that have the highest number of unhoused children. Yet their case load ratio is very, very high, and we don't have them in all of the schools that have a significant portion of unhoused children. We need to make sure we put Bridging the Gap social workers in all schools that need them, and at a level where there is a case load ratio that is actually humanly positive possible.

As former City Council Speaker, is there anything the City Council can be doing right now to protect against SNAP cuts or other cuts from the federal government?

Well, the Council is the branch of government closest to New Yorkers. They have a great opportunity to be a resource for organizing: to get info. out to people about where the food pantries are, where the soup kitchens are. Get info. out to people who are not food insecure, on what they can do to help those who are food insecure, what they can do to support the food bank, and support homeless service organizations. They can push the mayor to put more than $11 million on the table. They can have an oversight hearing on how dire this will be to the city of New York, to amp up the pressure both on Washington and on Mayor Adams.

What do you make of the City Council Speaker race right now? Are there any Council Speaker hopefuls that you think would do best at the job? 

The race is up and running. It goes into high gear the day after the general election. There is nothing like the Somos conference when there is a Speaker's race … A lot more … will be unveiled … There's a lot of women running, which I find exciting. There's at least one LGBT candidate, and so that's exciting, and I look forward to being a knowledgeable spectator as this moves forward, definitely.

Do you have any predictions for how Somos will play out, especially if Zohran Mamdani wins and (starts) forming his administration? 

Wild. It's going to be wild.

Anything that we should be looking out for?Somos is an important time to make connections, to network. [What] people want to know both in a mayor and in Speaker - but maybe even more in a Speaker … they want to make sure Speaker candidates are accessible, that they're people that they can get on the phone, that they can talk to. So how you are in a hangout mode is sometimes as important as how you are standing at the podium delivering a speech. This is a good opportunity for people to get that sense of a hangout, chill person, and what they're like. 

Mayor Eric Adams recently announced that he's going to be releasing some funding to assist New Yorkers as SNAP benefits shut off. Can the mayor be doing anything different to protect New Yorkers amid the shut off?

He should put up more money. And he probably, more than anybody right now in the city of New York, has a good relationship with President Trump and his people, and he should reach out and try to get the president to use the money that exists in USDA for these types of situations. … Right now, we're in fight mode. If there's an opportunity to work with in some way, then you do that. There isn't that opportunity right now. The only person in the city of New York who seems to be on speed dial with President Trump is Eric Adams.

You said in an interview earlier this year that Gov. Hochul keeps being underestimated. Now, as Hochul has endorsed Mamdani and recently received some opposition from his supporters at a rally on Sunday, do you have a message to New Yorkers who may be skeptical of Hochul and her ability to fight for affordability?

I think the proof is in the pudding. She was one of the first statewide elected officials to stand up and endorse Mamdani. She's the leading voice right now in the state around making sure that hungry people are getting food, when the President has cut food off. She's standing up, and people should make note of that. But this is New York, people should and always will make their opinions known.