LA's free weekly meal program will disappear next month, leaving thousands of older adults in limbo

An L.A. city program that delivers free weekly meals to thousands of people over the age of 60 is officially coming to a close at the end of August.

A last-ditch effort to further fund the Emergency Rapid Response Senior Meals program until the end of the year didn’t make it through the L.A. City Council on Tuesday, with officials bouncing it back to committee after citing the budget process and cost concerns.

Now, more than 5,450 people will lose access to five weekly meals on Aug. 31, and the waitlist with more than 1,300 people on it will be wiped, according to a report from the Department of Aging.

Dominic Engels, the CEO of Revolution Foods, a vendor partner for the program, said in a statement they’re disappointed some of the city’s most vulnerable older adults will miss these vital meals and urged the city council to address “this critical need” as quickly as possible.

“Los Angeles has the largest concentration of food insecure seniors in the nation,” Engels said in a statement. “No senior should ever go hungry, but it’s unfortunately going to be a very difficult fall for many seniors in L.A.”

How we got here

Councilmember Heather Hutt, who has 634 people receiving the free meals and 191 others on the waitlist in her 10th district, said during Tuesday’s council meeting that the program is part of the city’s homelessness prevention strategy, and now is not the time to abruptly end it.

“If seniors need to choose between food and rent or food and medicine, they'll choose food first,” Hutt said. “We need to be more thoughtful about how we approach serving our growing senior population and ensure that we meet their needs.”

Hutt introduced a motion to transfer more than $12.5 million from the city’s “unappropriated balance fund” to the program, adding that the city needs more money for liability payouts, but “not at the expense of our senior residents.”

But Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said it should be sent back to the Budget, Finance, and Innovation Committee for a second time, arguing that moving forward would have thrown the budget process away and lead to equal cuts in other city services.

Council President Paul Krekorian agreed and warned that appropriating the “very substantial amount of money” in that manner could break state law.

“I want to caution members that however we may feel about the substantive benefit of this kind of expenditure, it is almost certainly a violation of the Brown Act to vote on something that hasn't been previously agendized to expend $12 million,” he said. “So that's why this must be referred to the budget and finance committee.”

The city council voted to send Hutt’s motion back to te committee and directed the Department of Aging to come up with a plan for transitioning people to other meal programs.

Hutt’s office didn’t immediately respond to LAist’s request for additional comment.

A map of where the older adults being served by the Rapid Response Senior Meals program live in Los Angeles from a Department of Aging report to the L.A. City Council.

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Department of Aging

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Alternatives for older adults

Robert Camarena, the director of business development for Revolution Foods, told LAist they’ve been directed to distribute flyers to the roughly 1,600 people they serve “as quickly as we could” warning that the program will end and to direct them to other options in the city.

According to the Department of Aging, they will also connect each person in the program and on the waitlist to senior centers that will have meal options they can turn to come September.

But if someone doesn’t use those meals, or if the senior centers don’t have the capacity to serve them, people can be directed to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Meals on Wheels, Project Angel Food, and other food programs in the area.

Camarena said while those are good programs that serve a particular population, they don’t address everyone suffering from food insecurity.

“There is a large population of unserved seniors that do suffer from food insecurity who cannot get to traditional sites, need food immediately, and can't afford to go on a long wait list,” he said.