Higher Prices are Making it Harder for Elderly to Buy Food They Need

By John Iwaski, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

September 19, 2008

Bonnie Lenneman, a fill-in driver with the Chicken Soup Brigade, helps Bonnie Genevay, 80, put on a shawl during a home visit and meal delivery in Seattle.
She battles arthritis, endured two hip replacements and underwent three eye operations.

She can't read anymore, can't drive anymore, can't stand for more than an hour. Her feet and hands grow chilly because of poor circulation.
Bonnie Genevay, an 80-year-old retired gerontologist, once taught others about the effects of aging.

"Everything is coming true," she said wryly at her peaceful home in Seattle's Madison Valley. "I am the 'old people.' "

But Genevay's life is brightened every week by those who visit and help her get by, including those who make weekly deliveries of low-sodium versions of beef stroganoff and chicken cacciatore.

"You need the socialization and the kindness," she said. "That's as nourishing as the food."

While the shaky economy has made it more difficult for low-income people to meet their basic needs, the problem is deeper for the elderly and those with disabilities. Many are unable to shop for groceries, get to food banks or prepare their meals.

To highlight the issue, several public and private groups sponsored a forum Thursday that allowed state and local policymakers to hear from a dozen residents of Seattle Housing Authority high-rises.

They spoke of the choices they had to make between buying food or medicine, or paying their utility bills. "There's quite a bit of people here who live on peanut butter sandwiches -- that's it," one resident said.

Others spoke of the stigma and shame of using food stamps or going to food banks. "It could be you tomorrow; one never knows what might happen," a resident said.

The forum in SHA's Center Park building in Rainier Valley was promoted as a nonpolitical "listening session." But supporters of the Chicken Soup Brigade, one of eight programs that receive city funds to provide home-delivered meals, said they have recently e-mailed and faxed more than 200 messages to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, lobbying for increased city support.

A city report earlier this year said the city invests $1.8 million annually to support emergency food programs, not including elderly or child-nutrition programs that are primarily funded by federal or state grants.

Nearly half of the city funds went to food banks, with home delivery and meal programs each accounting for about 17 percent of the funds. Overall, the city helped feed more than 136,000 low-income and homeless people in 2007, the report said.

The Seattle Human Services Coalition, an alliance of human services providers, wants the city to include $400,000 in the 2009-2010 budget to expand home deliveries of meals. The money would eliminate a waiting list and serve individually packaged frozen meals to about 350 homebound people who are elderly, ill or have disabilities.

"The message we get, over and over, is that (the city invests) a lot in this area. I think that's true; however, the advocates are trying to show that the need is much greater," said Ania Beszterda-Alyson, lead policy and community advocate for the Lifelong AIDS Alliance and Chicken Soup Brigade.

A report earlier this year by the Congressional Hunger Center, a nonprofit training organization in Washington, D.C., concluded that "food insecurity" remains a problem among the vulnerable in Seattle's public housing. In surveying about a quarter of the residents who are elderly and disabled in seven subsidized housing facilities, researchers found that 55 percent of them reported not having access at all times to enough food to live active lives.
To help fellow residents at SHA's Green Lake Plaza, retired biologist Glenn Slemmer has spent the past 12 years collecting donated food at two grocery stores -- 1,500 pounds of lettuce, cauliflower, bananas and other produce and goods -- each weekend.

"It's not rotten. It's just not perfect," said Slemmer, 69.

He first delivers bags of groceries to residents with disabilities, then places the rest in the building's community room.

"When we help our families, our neighbors, our tribe or whatever, we experience feelings of happiness and confidence and satisfaction," Slemmer said. "It's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun."

Back in Madison Valley, Genevay said that her life would be drabber without the meals she receives from Chicken Soup Brigade. "I'd never starve. I'd open up a can of tomatoes," she said. "(But) I wouldn't have the joy of food."

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