How Much CalFresh Pays From October 1, and How to Check the County Got Yours Right

A family of four goes to $1,023, one person to $306, and the deductions that decide your benefit moved too.

On September 10 the state told every county welfare department in California what a CalFresh household will be allowed to get starting October 1, and nearly every number in it is larger than the one in force today. You're wondering whether you have to do anything to collect the increase. You don't. The notice California has told the counties to put in front of every CalFresh household before October 1 asks nothing of the people who get it; it says only that a household's benefits may change on October 1, and that the county will send a separate notice about any change to that household's own case. The county puts its own CalFresh enrollment at roughly 1.5 million residents.

What is worth twenty minutes is the rest of the notice, because the maximum allotment is the number everyone quotes and almost nobody receives. Here is the order: the new maximums, the number that is actually yours, the four deductions that moved, the cutoffs that decide whether you qualify at all, and the three county pages that will tell you the wrong thing if you check them before October 1.

The new maximums

The federal government sets these once a year, to take effect with the federal fiscal year that starts October 1. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Administration issued this year's on August 21 in its fiscal year 2027 cost-of-living adjustment memo, and California passed them to the counties on September 10 in All County Information Notice I-40-26, signed by Becky Silva, chief of the state's CalFresh branch. These are the amounts for October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, with the amounts they replace in parentheses:

• One person: $306 (was $298).
• Two people: $562 (was $546).
• Three people: $808 (was $785).
• Four people: $1,023 (was $994).
• Five people: $1,217 (was $1,183).
• Six people: $1,463 (was $1,421).
• Seven people: $1,616 (was $1,571).
• Eight people: $1,841 (was $1,789).
• Nine to 17 people: add $225 per additional person (was $218), and a household of 18 or more is capped at $3,887.

The raise runs from $8 a month for one person to $52 for eight — about 2.9 percent, though rounding makes it 2.7 percent for a single person and 3.0 percent for a household of six. The minimum benefit, the floor an eligible one- or two-person household gets when the formula below would otherwise produce less, goes from $24 to $25.

Why the maximum probably isn't your number

This is the part that is worth understanding once, because it decides what the raise is actually worth to you.

The maximum allotment is what a household with no countable income receives. Everyone else is paid on a formula written into federal regulation: under 7 CFR 273.10(e)(2)(ii)(A), a household's monthly allotment "shall be equal to the maximum SNAP allotment for the household's size reduced by 30 percent of the household's net monthly income."

Net monthly income is not your paycheck. It is what is left after the deductions the program allows — chiefly a standard deduction every household gets, 20 percent of earned income, dependent care, certain medical costs for elderly and disabled members, and the shelter deduction. Thirty cents of every dollar of net income comes off the top of your benefit, which means every dollar a deduction removes from net income is worth thirty cents of food money. That is why the deduction increases below are not footnotes. For a household well above zero income, they can be worth more than the headline raise.

The four deductions that moved

The standard deduction rises for every household size: $217 for one to three people (from $209), $229 for four (from $223), $268 for five (from $261), and $308 for six or more (from $299).

The Standard Utility Allowance goes from $663 to $686. This is the figure California uses in place of your actual gas and electric bills when you are billed for heating or cooling separately from your rent or mortgage, and for a renter it is often the largest single line in that calculation. The Limited Utility Allowance, for households that pay at least two utilities other than heating and cooling, goes from $170 to $176. The Telephone Utility Allowance goes from $20 to $21.

The shelter deduction cap goes from $744 to $769. Read the state's wording closely, because it names who the ceiling is for: the maximum shelter deduction rose "for households without an elderly or disabled member." A household with a member 60 or older or disabled has no ceiling on its excess shelter deduction at all. For those households, rent above the threshold comes off net income without a cap, and that single rule is usually worth more than everything else on this page.

The homeless household shelter allowance, a flat shelter deduction for households with no fixed residence, goes from $198.99 to $205.66.

We ran the numbers on three one-person cases, holding income flat from September and changing nothing else. A household already at the shelter cap is reached by two of the changes above: the cap rises $25 and the standard deduction rises $8, so net income falls $33. Thirty percent of $33 is $9.90, so the formula hands back nearly ten dollars — on top of the $8 the maximum itself went up. Call it $18, not $8. A household under the cap that claims the utility allowance picks up the allowance's $23 and the standard deduction's $8, assuming the extra $23 still leaves it under the new $769 ceiling: net income falls $31, the formula returns $9.30, and the raise is about $17. A household under the cap claiming no utility allowance at all gets the $8 in the maximum plus $2.40, and that is the floor of this raise. Which side of the cap you are on, and whether you claim a utility allowance, is what decides which of those three you are.

The cutoffs that decide whether you qualify

California does not use the federal 130 percent gross income test as its front door. Under Modified Categorical Eligibility — broad-based categorical eligibility, in the federal vocabulary — the gross income limit for most CalFresh households is 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and that table also rises on October 1:

• One person: $2,660 a month (was $2,610).
• Two people: $3,608 (was $3,526).
• Three people: $4,554 (was $4,442).
• Four people: $5,500 (was $5,360).
• Five people: $6,448; six: $7,394; seven: $8,340; eight: $9,288, then $948 for each additional person.

The net income test — 100 percent of the poverty level, applied after the deductions above — goes from $1,305 to $1,330 for one person and from $2,680 to $2,750 for four. Households where an elderly or disabled member is counted as a separate household are tested at 165 percent: $2,195 for one person, up from $2,152.

Two more numbers in the same notice are the ones that get people in trouble. The income reporting threshold is the gross monthly figure you must report crossing, within 10 days of knowing about it, and it is set at 130 percent of poverty: $1,729 for one person, $2,345 for two, $2,960 for three, $3,575 for four, rising $616 per person after eight. The resource limit stays at $3,000 for most households, but rises from $4,500 to $4,750 for households with a member 60 or older or disabled — a threshold that does double duty as the definition of substantial lottery or gambling winnings, which disqualify a household outright.

Three county pages still post last year's numbers

We checked the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services pages a reader would actually land on, on September 24. All three still carry the figures that expire on September 30, and none of them says so.

The department's policy page on the cost-of-living adjustment is titled for federal fiscal year 2026, carries a release date of September 30, 2025, and lists the Standard Utility Allowance at $663, the shelter deduction at $744 and the minimum allotment at $24.

The department's CalFresh fact sheet, the page that answers "how much could I get," runs the old ladder from $298 to $1,789 and labels it correctly: "Amounts effective October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026." It is accurate through September 30 and wrong from October 1.

The page that matters most is the gross income eligibility page, because it is where someone decides whether to bother applying. It lists the 130 percent and 200 percent tables at last year's values — $2,610 for one person, $5,360 for four — and prints no effective date at all. A single applicant earning $2,630 a month reads that page, sees a limit of $2,610, and concludes they are over the line. From October 1 the line is $2,660 and they are under it.

The county is not obliged to fix a web page, but it is obliged to write to you. State regulation MPP 63-504.39 requires county welfare departments to inform every CalFresh household of the new amounts on or before October 1, using the state's CF 11 notice or another mass-noticing method. So the correct numbers are coming to your mailbox or your BenefitsCal message center regardless of what the website says.

One typo to ignore if you go and read the state's notice yourself: its opening paragraph contradicts the rest of the document, telling counties that the federal government "has issued the Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustments for the period of October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027." Every table in the document, and its own executive summary, says 2027. The dates in that sentence are the ones that are right.

The change that cuts the other way

Two things worth knowing are moving against the raise, and neither is in the October notice.

The first is the State Utility Assistance Subsidy, a $20.01 annual energy payment whose entire purpose is to qualify a household for that $686 utility allowance even when heat and power are folded into the rent. The county's policy page says that under H.R. 1, the federal budget law signed July 4, 2025, the payment now goes only to households that are not otherwise eligible for the utility allowance, are not already receiving the maximum allotment for their size, and contain a member who is 60 or older or disabled. The allowance is bigger; the door to it is narrower.

The second is work reporting. The county announced in May that from June 1 it would enforce the expanded federal rule requiring adults 18 to 64 who are able to work and have no dependent under 14 in the household to complete at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a month, of approved work or training to keep benefits beyond three months in any 36-month period. The same announcement put CalFresh enrollment in the county at roughly 1.5 million residents, with more than 320,000 more who appear eligible and are not enrolled.

What to do, in order

Nothing, to get the increase. It is automatic on open cases.

Watch for the CF 11 notice by October 1, and keep it. If you claim the utility allowance and your case is otherwise unchanged, expect a separate notice telling you how your own benefit moved.

Compare October's deposit against the ladder at the top of this page. If you have no countable income, you should see the maximum for your household size exactly. If you have income, October should be higher than September unless something else about your case changed — and if it is lower, that is a call, not a wait.

Make it at (866) 613-3777, the department's customer service center, which the county says is open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., or check the case yourself on BenefitsCal, the state portal the department's own CalFresh page sends both applicants and open cases to. And if the county got October's math wrong, the deadline is on the notice itself: you have 90 days from the day you receive it to ask for a state hearing, at 1-800-952-5253, or 1-800-952-8349 on a TDD.