Senior Meal Program Faces an Emergency

ANAHEIM-Last summer Shirley Cohen, 71, mortgaged her home; last month Muriel Nelson, 68, cashed in part of her life savings.

Now they have no money left to give to the federally funded social service program they lovingly administer, which feeds 3,000 senior citizens throughout Orange County.

Without an emergency infusion of $100,000, their Feedback Foundation--one of the the oldest meal programs in Orange County for senior citizens, and one of the largest in the nation--will have to close down for the month of June. It has run out of money and won’t get new federal funds until July.

Officials with the foundation, a nonprofit program started 17 years ago to feed the county’s elderly, have asked for a chance to make a last-minute appeal before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. It is still unclear whether they will be heard.

“Why should Orange County taxpayers want to keep us afloat?” Cohen, director of the foundation, asked rhetorically. “Because it’s the county’s senior citizens. Because it could be their mother or father. Because everyone--no matter how much they can afford to pay--is entitled to one meal a day.”

The Feedback Foundation receives about $1.79 million annually in federal funds to operate 28 sites where citizens over 60 can go for a hot meal, usually served around noon. The foundation also serves hundreds of elderly citizens who are ill or otherwise unable to leave their homes. The home-bound program is headed by Nelson, who cashed in a $20,000 certificate of deposit so that she could loan the money to the foundation to help it meets its bills last month.

Clients pay on a sliding scale, based on what they can afford. But at least two-thirds of the seniors served, under federal grant laws, must be classified as poor. And with rising housing and medical costs in Orange County, fewer and fewer are able to pay anything at all for their meals, said Cohen, who took out a $75,000 mortgage on her home in August to help keep the foundation afloat.

As the foundation’s operating costs have continued to climb, however, its support from the federal government has remained the same for the past eight years, she said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth said he has asked county social service officials to review the request and try to put together a report in time for Tuesday’s meeting. The funding request had not been added to the board’s agenda as of late Thursday, however, and Roth said he did not know whether the county would be able to come up with the funds.

“I know the program from my time as the mayor of Anaheim,” Roth said. “This is one of the most worthwhile programs that the county could fund, but we just can’t pluck this money out of the sky.”

Cohen said several of the cities served by the Feedback Foundation have promised some emergency help. Santa Ana has promised $10,000; Orange is expected to put up $15,000 and Brea $2,900, Cohen said. Anaheim is scheduled to consider $17,000 in funding next week.

Some of the clients are also out raising funds. A group of senior citizens in Laguna Beach has started collecting donations at grocery stores. Another group in Anaheim is sponsoring a bake sale.

“The seniors are getting very upset,” Cohen said.

Juanita Muro, 61, crippled by arthritis and a bad heart, worries about what she will do if the program folds. Muro lives in a sparsely furnished condominium that she owns in Santa Ana.

In the winter, her home is especially cold because she has no rugs to cover her concrete floors. She has no stove on which to cook, and her refrigerator works only some of the time, according to a county social worker familiar with her case. What money Muro has for food, she said, she spends on her two pre-school grandsons, of whom she has been awarded custody.

“It means a lot to me,” Muro said of the meal brought to her each day by a Feedback Foundation aide.

Cohen said that the social nurturing that clients receive through contact with foundation representatives is almost as important as the food.

“It’s like a family,” Cohen said. “We get some real nice notes about how terrible and lonely it would be if they didn’t get their meals.”