‘Anxiety is through the roof’

Meals on Wheels People is asking for community support as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lays off 10,000 employees, a move that may hamper the nonprofit’s ability to address hunger and isolation among older adults. Meals on Wheels People serves nutritious meals to nearly 9,000 older adults annually across the Portland metro area. The nonprofit’s CEO, Suzanne Washington, said the cuts greatly impact the Administration for Community Living, the federal agency that oversees programs supporting older adults. “This is the dismantling of an entire system built to care for our aging population,” Washington said in a news release. “The ACL is the backbone of support for millions of older adults across the country.” Washington said the federal cuts “will have real and devastating consequences right here in our community.” Meals on Wheels People’s federal funding is secure through June, but Washington is concerned that the federal cuts could delay money that used to flow through the ACL to local agencies that disperse funds to organizations serving older adults. “We’ve heard that, with the new orders, everyone in the budget office at the ACL was let go,” Washington said. “So if there is no one left in the budget office to distribute the funds, where do those funds go?” Washington said she is hopeful the federal government will distribute the money to regional agencies, including the Area Agency on Aging & Disabilities of Southwest Washington, within the normal time frame, but is preparing alternative budgets in case the money is delayed or doesn’t arrive at all. Washington said people who depend on Meals on Wheels People are already worried. “The anxiety is through the roof,” Washington said. “We’re getting calls from people who are living on $700 a month and are worried that they are not going to get a meal from us, that they’re going to go hungry.” Washington and her staff have tried to reassure their clients that the 55-year-old nonprofit organization is not going anywhere. “We intend to keep feeding people,” Washington said. “We don’t want to scare people. We are going to continue — that’s our intent.” Increasing need Meals on Wheels People delivers meals to homebound adults 60 and older in the Portland metro area, including 1,179 people in Clark County. The organization also serves thousands of older adults at more than a dozen dining centers, including 522 Clark County residents at dining centers in Amboy, La Center, Ridgefield, Vancouver and Washougal. Washington said requests for Meals on Wheels People’s programs have increased over the past two years. In 2024, Meals on Wheels People had a 12 percent increase in requests for service, Washington said. This year, the requests climbed another 8 percent. “Groceries have gone up. Utilities have gone up. Rent has gone up — everything has gone up — and people need us more,” Washington said. “Without our assistance, they can’t eat.” More than half of the Meals on Wheels People recipients living in Clark County are female and live alone, and nearly 45 percent have an annual income of less than $20,000, said Kelsey Allen, the organization’s communications specialist. Unlike some Meals on Wheels programs operating across the country, the nonprofit Meals on Wheels People has never had to turn people away. “We’ve never had a waitlist,” Washington said. “We are our own nonprofit, … and we are fundraising constantly.” Meals on Wheels People receives about 35 percent of its funding from the government and depends on community donations and local fundraising. Its Clark County programs especially rely on the goodwill of the community, Washington said, adding that the nonprofit’s fundraising throughout the Portland metro area subsidizes the Clark County dining centers and home-delivery program by about $1.1 million annually. “Hopefully, people will continue to donate and will donate now and not wait for disaster,” Washington said. More than a meal Janice Butzke is the operations manager for Meals on Wheels People’s Washougal dining center and The Diner Vancouver, the organization’s restaurant that is open to the entire community but includes a donation-based dining option for those 60 and older. Butzke said the congregate dining programs, which serve lunch at community centers and other locations spread across Clark County in Washington and Multnomah and Washington counties in Oregon, provide much more than just an affordable, nutritious meal. “The folks who come here are making connections and socializing, which is so crucial at this stage of life,” Butzke said. “We know isolation is deadly. Being isolated, for our health, is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” Meals on Wheels People serves lunch at the Washougal dining center every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. When the center reopened earlier this year after a five-month closure for renovations, Butzke said people were overjoyed. Gail Byram, 77, of Washougal, was one of the first to return to the Washougal Community Center after it reopened in March. She said she was thrilled to rejoin her community of Meals on Wheels People lunch friends. “Everyone here is so welcoming and lovely,” Byram said. “We need this here. It’s very important to socialize, to get out.” Byram was still grieving the loss of her husband, Eldon Byram, her brother and her pet cat when the Washougal dining center she’d been coming to for more than a decade closed temporarily in 2024. “I had lost my husband and was just getting out again when it closed,” she said. “It was really hard.” If the recent federal cuts do force Meals on Wheels People to rethink its budget, Washington said the dining centers could be one of the programs most in danger. “Even though we’re delivering to a lot of rural areas, it is much more expensive to run the congregate dining (centers),” Washington said. The nonprofit’s volunteers help offset the costs of the home-delivery program, but renting space and paying staff add to the dining centers’ costs, Washington explained. “So that may be one of the bigger risks — that we would have to pull back and have less congregate dining,” she said. For the people who rely on the Meals on Wheels People dining centers for much more than just a nutritious meal, those types of cuts could be devastating, Butzke said. “They come here to see each other, to talk about their day and socialize,” Butzke said. “You can see the community bonding here. It would break my heart if we lost this.” How to help Meals on Wheels People’s online fundraising campaign can be found at tinyurl.com/2sxwkh62 Kelly Moyer: 360-735-4674; kelly.moyer@columbian.com

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