TESTIMONY
Jeanette Estima from Citymeals on Wheels on Enhancing Funding and Support for Home-Delivered Meal Services
2:23:54
·
138 sec
Jeanette Estima highlights the growing need for home meal services for older adults and the financial challenges facing providers due to escalating service demands and food costs.
- Estima requests a renewal and increase in funding from the NYC Council to sustain and expand home-delivered meal services.
- Citymeals on Wheels has provided over 34,000 emergency meals and pre-supplied over 160,000 meals for extreme weather situations in the fiscal year.
- The organization served about 115 more older adults than the previous year, with a 33% increase in food costs during the pandemic.
- Estima urges an increase in the reimbursement rate for meal deliveries and a $50 million capital fund for kitchen repairs and upgrades.
Jeanette Estima
2:23:54
Afternoon.
2:23:55
My name is Janetta Steemer, and I'm the director of policy and advocacy at City Mills on Wheels.
2:23:59
Thank you to your Hudson for the opportunity to testify today.
2:24:03
City Mills was established over 40 years ago to fill a gap in the city's home delivered meal program, which provides only one meal per day, 5 days a week, excluding the Gens and holidays.
2:24:14
We're also a city wide emergency food responder for older New Yorkers who cannot access other emergency food programs.
2:24:21
In fiscal 20 3, we responded to about 63 local emergencies with over 34,000 meals.
2:24:29
And we pre supplied home deliver meal's recipients with over 160,000 meals in our seasonal emergency food packages to ensure they wouldn't go hungry when extreme weather hits.
2:24:42
Like most aging providers, aging services providers, we continue to see a rapid growth in the need for our services.
2:24:50
In FY23, we served about 115 more older adults than we did in FY22.
2:24:56
And during the pandemic, our food costs increased by about 33%.
2:25:01
Therefore, we respectfully request a renewal of the 500,000 that we received through the older adult clubs programs and enhancements initiative, and an enhancement of 300,000.
2:25:15
The entire network of home emailed providers is under extreme pressure caused by increased needs and costs.
2:25:22
On average, they saw a 20 percent increase in food cost from a recent survey we did with other HCM providers.
2:25:31
But NYC Aging's recent RFP keeps a flat per meal reimbursement rate, making it untenable to maintain that current level of service.
2:25:39
So we urge the city to increase the reimbursement rate for home delivered meals contracts to $15.31 per meal.
2:25:46
And I wanted to answer a question that was raised earlier We during that survey, we also asked folks about their kitchens.
2:25:55
Of the 16 providers we spoke with, 6 had non operational kitchens that were non operational due to capital needs.
2:26:02
So we also join our partners in calling for that $50,000,000 capital fund to repair and upgrade these important community resources.
2:26:11
Thank you.