USAToday has an articleup on the issue and makes a few points that might explain a bit of the difficulty finding a GQ answer.
Meals on Wheels is not a federally run program. Each MOW branch is its own organization with a different mix of funding sources.
Health and Human Services has a line item for “home-delivered nutrition services.” through the Administration for Community Living. Many MOW programs get considerable funding through ACL.
The feds also provide block grants to the states through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The states decide what to spend the money on. Some (many, perhaps most?) states provide some of that funding to MOW programs. Some of these block grants *might *be impacted by proposed budget cuts as well.
So far the budget proposal is in a “skinny” form, which the article seems to indicate is a term used since it does not have all the details of line items for specific departments and programs, not that the budget proposal is trying to starve anyone.
So it is hard to pin down how much funding may be cut from which federal department. And if block grants are cut then states may choose to handle those cuts in different ways so some MOW programs may escape any cuts while others may be harder hit.
If you’re asking what the difference is between congregate and home-delivered, the congregate meals are served freshly made at a MOW center. There are other activities there such as bingo games and game boards for visitors to partake of as a socialization setting. There are usually senior exercise programs and talks about nutrition, etc. These are all for those who are mobile enough to get to the center.
The home-delivered meals are prepared at a central facility and delivered to the satellite facilities where the volunteer drivers pick them up. I would suspect that the difference in price is because it’s cheaper to make mass-produced meals.
Those are good points but, if those fact sheets are accurate, the numbers are abyssal. The actual volume is extremely low and the costs are insanely high. If you do the division, every meal costs in the low to mid hundreds of dollars range (over $450 a meal in one case). It sounds like it would be cheaper just to give seniors menus to the most expensive restaurants in their area or even the world, tell them to go crazy, and have it delivered.
That can’t be right. I calculated above that meals in Oregon are something like $11 per meal. I think we’re both missing something with those numbers. Unless those are the meals per day? Then it makes more sense.
Probably. I spent 5 weeks [sub]of court ordered community service to get a juvenile conviction expunged from my record[/sub] delivering MOW in my local neighborhood in the late 90’s. The meals were old-style aluminum TV dinner trays with some turkey or ham and gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, and a few slices of bread.
If those meals were 300 or 450 clams each, they must have been prepared by a defense contractor.
Thanks for the comments.
I transposed the titles and the numbers. The number of items I cited are in fact the number of people receiving the meals. As pointed out, the cost-per-meal is around $5.11 for North Carolina.
I should have said:
In N. Carolina in 2015
MOW spent $12 million to serve 26,600 congregate seniors
MOW spent $6 million to serve 19,000 home-delivered seniors
In Louisiana in 2015
MOW spent $6 million to serve 18,000 congregate seniors
MOW spent 3 million to serve 19,600 home-delivered seniors
Part of the reason for the mistake is that I was actually more confused by the graph at the bottom of the fact sheet. It is from that graph that I got the amounts. The part that is confusing me is the large differences among states. Does it really cost twice as much to serve home-delivered seniors in N. Carolina as in Louisiana? MOW spent twice as much (about $300/home-delivered senior in N.C.at $2.11/meal vs $150 in La.at $0.92/meal) on each home-delivered senior in N.C. vs La. These could be just the federal share of the cost-it is not clear to me what is meant by the graph. Similar differences seem to show up in other states. I assume, I hope, that the differences are explained by other services provided during the meals. Perhaps La. just provides a tray and N.C. provides a wellness check and perhaps other services with each meal. I don’t know. But the differences among the states is striking.
Would anyone care to put in words what they think the graph at the bottom of the fact sheet is trying to say (besides funding is flat)?
I would take issue with the accompanying photo in your link. As far as I know, MOW does not hand-feed clients. That would be a job for an assisted living facility, or perhaps a caretaker.
one data point: in my area seniors can get on a waiting list for MOW that is approximately 2 years’ waiting time to get subsidized service (senior is asked to pay $1, or more if he or she feels so moved) or pay $8 a meal (full cost) to get service immediately.
I think part of the confusion is that in Louisiana, that $6 million is what the Older Americans Act provides to feed the 18,000 congregate seniors, but not the total amount spent by MOW to feed that group; they also spend some additional sum of state/local/private money, plus money from federal buckets other than the OAA. Only 23% of total LA MOW spending comes from the OAA; that’s $6.6 of $29 million. Since total federal spending is somewhere around $12 million, per the graph at the bottom, then the additional federal buckets contribute ~$5.5 million and non-federal sources contribute ~$17 million, for an average cost of around $6.32 per meal. [$29 million / 4.6 million meals]
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the OAA covers 48% of the total cost, or $11.5 million of $23.9 million total expenditures. Other federal programs must be kicking in another $9 million or so, and the state/local/private only comes to not quite three million. $23.9 million / 4.6 million meals = $5.11 each, or actually cheaper than Louisiana.
I think.
Those fact sheets are not exactly models of clarity, are they?
The entire Community Development Block Grant program is being cut, and it costs 3 BILLION. So meals on wheels is claimed to receive 0.1% of the budget of that program.
Actually because its BLOCK GRANDS funding, the spending is passed on down to state and cities, its not directly spent by HUD washington, and they dont really know how its spent… , and so you’d have to sum it up at state that level to find the total MoW funding from the BLOCK GRANTS. Anyway its hard to find the info about 0.1% of its spending.
FYI. I signed up my mother for MOW with the local San Diego organization. It cost $57 per month for two meals delivered every day. I didn’t ask about subsidies because I paid for it and could easily afford it.
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Those fact sheets are not exactly models of clarity, are they?
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No they are not.
Any time a page starts with a pop-up asking for money one has to be wary of the details…
MOW is a great concept. But it is a very local program and how it is run varies location by location. State-wide or nation-wide summaries are never going to be very informative.
As others have said, there is no factual answer as to how much Trump is proposing to cut MOW funding. He is proposing to cancel the Community Development Block Grant, these block grants go to local governments who can use them largely how they see fit. Some communities use them to fund MOW. But as noted the vast majority of MOW Federal funding comes from other agencies, primarily HHS. Since we don’t have a full budget proposal (just a skinny budget) it’s an open question if MOW would be one of the programs affected by the proposed across-the-board cuts to Federal agencies, or if it would be spared.
I’m not claiming that it was. My point is that that was the going rate. I posted to add an example of the consumer-level cost to the discussion of global budgets. Leaving now.
