Results on the plate for meal recipients
If they want to cut back on David Drees’ broccoli, it’s not going to happen without a fight.
“I need this,” said Drees, gazing as fondly as a man can gaze at a plastic tray of vegetables. “I don’t know what I would do without it.”
Drees, 70, was sitting on the bed of his small Tenderloin hotel room at Mason and Eddy streets on Friday when the Meals on Wheels deliveryman came by with the weekend’s haul.
Drees is the former manager at the old Enrico’s nightclub in North Beach, but that was a few decades ago and fortunes change. His funds ran low and then he came down with a neurological disorder that obliges him to use a walker. He moved into the Ambassador Hotel — a bare bones, single room occupancy establishment. Meals on Wheels, he said, is his lifeline.
He was watching TV on Thursday
when White House budget director Mick Mulvaney explained in Washington, D.C., that Meals on Wheels was one of the programs targeted to lose funding in President Trump’s proposed budget. The program, Mulvaney said, is “not showing any results” and the government “can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good.”
Drees said he felt his jaw drop. The results from Meals on Wheels, he said, were right there in his lap. Take a look, he said. Salmon, tandoori chicken, carrot salad, spinach and the St. Patrick’s Day special of corned beef. It will see him through the weekend. He’ll eat everything, even the carrot salad, though he doesn’t particularly like it and never has.
Meals on Wheels is under fire, he said, and everyone has to do his part.
“Trump is hitting me where I live,” Drees said. “He’s hitting me in my broccoli. What kind of results does he want me to show? I’m here. Is my survival that averse to them?’’
In a worst-case scenario, the San Francisco program could lose up to $3 million of its $14 million annual funding through federal cuts, Meals on Wheels spokesman Karl Robillard said. While such cuts would not doom the program, he said it would alter it.
“It’s going to get really ugly — we’ll have to play a game of ‘Survivor’ and start kicking people off the island,” Robillard said.
Meanwhile, a few doors down the hall from Drees at the Ambassador, John Behenna, 66, got his weekend meal delivery, too.
“Without this, I’d have to go to St. Anthony’s Dining Room and I can’t really do that,” he said, referring to a soup kitchen on Golden Gate Avenue. “I’m blind and I have diabetes. This program is not a waste. Without it, a lot of people would die and I could be one of them. Don’t these people understand?”
Drees and Behenna are two of the 3,600 clients served by Meals on Wheels in San Francisco, which last year delivered 1.7 million meals to seniors and others who cannot cook or otherwise feed themselves. The San Francisco organization is one of about 5,000 Meals on Wheels programs nationwide that could be hurt by a proposed 18 percent cut in the Health and Human Services budget and the proposed elimination of federal block grants.
Drees’ broccoli and the rest of his delivered meal had been prepared at the main Meals on Wheels kitchen in the city’s Bayview district, where workers were stunned by the news coming out of Washington.
“Everybody’s going to need us some day,” said Joyce Vaughn, who was loading apples, bread and cheese into lunch bags. “Even budget directors. He’s a senior himself,” she said of Mulveney.
Kitchen worker Armando Preciado said Mulveney’s words were a “stupid thing to say” and that it reflects the “complete ignorance” of the new president.
“This is a program that actually works,’’ he said.
A dozen workers were slicing and dicing, and loading the day’s meals into plastic trays on a conveyor belt. The trays, sealed in plastic wrap, looked like what airline passengers used to get before airlines decided that meals were expendable, too.
“Of all the programs to single out,” said food service director Andy Braun, shaking his head. “That’s Trump for you.”
The national Meals on Wheels program is a nonprofit organization that began in 1976, although several local branches started earlier. Its mission is to “improve the health and quality of life so that no one is left hungry or isolated.” Nationwide it serves 2.4 million clients.
“The support for our program has been coming out of the woodwork since Thursday,” said Dave Linnell, program officer for the San Francisco Meals on Wheels. “People realize how important we are.”
About half of the annual $14 million budget in San Francisco comes from private donations, including from clients, and half from government grants. The program spends 82 percent of that amount to pay for food and delivery. The rest pays for fundraising and for management salaries.
Any short-term savings could be insignificant compared to the long-term cost of letting people in need go hungry. Preparing and delivering the meals cost about $12 per person per day, according to Robillard. The cost of a day’s care in a nursing home — where many clients might otherwise end up — is about 25 times as much.
“Without this, I’d have to go to St. Anthony’s Dining Room and I can’t really do that. I’m blind and I have diabetes. This program is not a waste.” John Behenna, 66, SRO resident