Koreatown senior center to revive free lunch program as more elderly seek food assistance

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Koreatown Senior & Community Center is bringing back its free lunch program for seniors, this time with its longest guaranteed run yet.

The center is partnering with the YMCA under a two-year agreement, which would allow the program — for the first time — to run continuously for that long. In the past, the center’s free lunch program typically lasted only a few months at a time before funding cuts forced it to scale back or stop temporarily.

If all goes as planned, the program is expected to relaunch by late April.

“We’re committed to identifying funding beyond the two years,” said Mario Valenzuela, chief mission advancement officer at the YMCA. 

The program is returning as meal services for seniors across L.A. face ongoing funding challenges. In September, LA Public Press reported that some senior centers were cutting back on meals as pandemic-era funding expired and longer-term funding looked uncertain. Valenzuela said that across the YMCA’s 29 food distribution sites in the county, seniors now make up the majority of those seeking assistance.

The YMCA was awarded $7.5 million last year to address food insecurity, and Valenzuela said the Koreatown senior lunch program is one way those funds are being used.

The center launched its free lunch program in January 2024 with about 200 meals a day, funded by the city’s Department of Aging. But the number of meals steadily declined, from 200 to 50, before the program ended in early January.

Hyun-ok Lee, president of the board of the Koreatown Senior & Community Center, said the sudden halt was difficult for people who had come to rely on the meals.

“When the meal service suddenly stopped, a lot of seniors and people in the community really felt it,” Lee said.

After the program stopped, the center began looking for new funding sources. That effort eventually led to a connection with the YMCA, facilitated by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, according to both the center and the YMCA.

“It was important for the Assemblymember to ensure that meals are culturally sensitive, especially for the seniors in our district, so we were able to connect the YMCA with KSCC and reinstitute the daily distribution of Korean lunch boxes at KSCC,” Nina Suh-Toma, Gonzalez’s field representative, said. 

Valenzuela said the organization stepped in after hearing from multiple senior centers that funding for services was being cut.

The Koreatown senior center’s free lunch program will cost between $210,000 and $250,000 a year and will initially provide 100 meals a day from Monday to Friday, with the goal of eventually increasing that number to 200.

Valenzuela said the program is part of a broader shift at the YMCA to work more directly in communities. 

“We can no longer just focus within our four walls,” he said. “We really have to meet the community where they’re at.”

The YMCA and the center are still working out the details of the partnership, including how meals will be distributed. Valenzuela said they’re currently looking for a food vendor that can provide Korean meals that are both culturally appropriate and meet nutritional guidelines.

Valenzuela said he’s already seeing growing demand for these services. 

“I think the emerging need is there are a lot of cuts coming down the pipeline particularly to social services and the most vulnerable population right now are seniors,” he said. “We’re seeing it across L.A. County.”