Citymeals ramping up food deliveries to shut-in seniors
Amid the pressure cooker of the city’s coronavirus crisis, Citymeals on Wheels is working overtime to keep local seniors from going hungry.
The Bronx-based nonprofit that typically delivers 500,000 shelf-stable meals a year is now on track to produce half that amount in just the first 21⁄2 weeks of the public health emergency, Executive Director Beth Shapiro said.
“It’s unprecedented,” Shapiro told the Daily News. “In response to Hurricane Sandy, we did 64,000 meals in about three weeks. So this is what, four times that?”
According to the CDC, the highly contagious new coronavirus is most dangerous for elderly patients and those with preexisting health conditions.
For seniors still willing and able to venture outside, many stores have begun offering special hours to give them first crack at clean and restocked shelves away from big crowds.
Dollar General began dedicating the first hour of each shopping day to senior shoppers Tuesday, and Whole Foods followed suit with a similar program Wednesday.
But many seniors are simply too spooked to go anywhere, and fixed incomes mean they can’t splurge on restaurant or grocery delivery fees.
“We’re providing a critical lifeline,” Shapiro said. “I delivered meals last week and met a woman who was afraid to leave her home. She was 85 and full of energy, but she didn’t want to walk outside her front door.”
The Citymeals warehouse in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx was buzzing Wednesday with its regular 15-member staff doubled to some 30 people and dozens of volunteers.
“You just find where you are needed, on whatever line is working, and you just do what you can. You get into a rhythm,” volunteer Ellen Port, 46, said as she worked in gloves alongside her 16-yearold son, Sebastian.
“I do it personally because my elderly parents are in Norway, and I am feeling anxious about them and by being isolated from them. But this is something I can do locally,” the Brooklyn mom said.
“It’s a whole new world,” she marveled. “I don’t think we have digested it yet.”
Fellow mom Lisa Lewis was volunteering at the warehouse with her two teens — Hayden, 14 and Lucy, 16.
“You don’t realize how great the need is. It is a silent thing. You see the quantities that we just packed, and it’s hundreds and hundreds of cans, all going to these anonymous people who can’t really leave their apartment,” she said.
“It puts it into perspective how big the problem of hunger and elderly is in the city. And now they need this more than ever, and you can’t be afraid to come out and pack the boxes. We all have a job to do,” she said.
“It’s really hard to think of all these people who don’t have food, and I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t have food to eat,” said Hayden, a student at Poly Prep.
Citymeals spokesman Malcolm Murray said the group typically works with about 30 home-delivery centers across the city, but that number has ballooned to 250 in recent days.
“About 14% of the people who get home-delivered meals — that’s the only meal they would have for the whole day. So, it’s important. We can’t not do it. That’s what keeps us going,” he said.
“Right now, we can meet the demand, but it’s a very fluid situation,” Shapiro said Wednesday.
She said public support is key, and 100% of individual donations are spent exclusively on meal prep and delivery. Anyone interested in giving their time or money should visit the group’s website, www.citymeals.org.
“Two weeks ago we were expecting to need 45,000 shelf-safe stable meals for this crisis. Then we quickly realized that would not do. We added another 100,000 and then another 100,000,” she said.