Budget Cuts Threaten SF Food Programs for Seniors and Adults With Disabilities

Funding is drying up for food programs that serve older adults and people with disabilities across San Francisco, potentially endangering the health of thousands.

Some providers are cutting back services even as more people queue up for free meals and bags of groceries.

“We’ve seen that line just grow and grow and grow,” said Humberto Pinon, senior health educator and communications coordinator for Curry Senior Center.

The pandemic spurred governments to pour money into nutrition programs that offered free meals and groceries, in large part to protect seniors — they no longer had to risk infection at crowded stores or fully contend with soaring grocery prices. But as emergency measures wound down, the subsidies dwindled, and recent local budget cuts to San Francisco service providers have further threatened food programs.

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Nonprofits are scrambling to fill their budget holes and preserve their services in an environment where private funders are also pulling back.

“We’re just left holding the bag, to have to make up the difference through more and more fundraising,” said Winnie Yu, chief programs and compliance officer for Self-Help for the Elderly, which offers free meals and many other services like housing, case management and hospice.

“And it’s not just us. All of the nutrition providers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally have the same challenges,” Yu said.

Deficits in the millions

Local, state and federal funding cuts have forced the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank to significantly reduce services, according to an October press release. The organization faces estimated deficits of $2.1 million for last year and $6.6 million this year, said Keely Hopkins, associate director of marketing and communications.

The bank had expanded its Home-Delivered Groceries program during the pandemic to serve older adults who were more susceptible to the coronavirus, as well as other groups such as pregnant people and families with children who had disabilities. It served 13,000 households weekly at its height, but today that number is down to just under 8,000 households, said Seth Harris, the program’s associate director. By June 2025, the organization is also slated to close multiple food-distribution sites that opened in response to COVID-19, Harris said. The sites serve 18,000 households, Mission Local reported.

Budget cuts from City Hall last year forced local organization Bayview Senior Services to stop providing meals on weekends. This year it faces $500,000 in additional cuts, said Executive Director Cathy Davis, compelling it to stop offering take-out meals, though it will continue to offer home deliveries. Davis said she wishes she could scale up meal deliveries to meet demand, but the organization is “really not financially equipped to do much more unless we can increase our support.”

And the money the city gave the Curry Senior Center this year for one of its food programs, providing free weekly groceries, was about half what it gave last year, said Ruben Chavez, the organization’s deputy director. Facing a growing waitlist, staff have begun giving walk-ups groceries that are registered to people who are unable to pick them up, Pinon said.

‘Like squeezing water from a turnip’

Organizations are receiving less funding from private sources too.

With emergency pandemic measures phased out, the public perception is that nutrition programs are less essential, so organizations are receiving fewer donations from generous individuals, said Jim Oswald, director of marketing and communications at Meals on Wheels San Francisco, which delivers free meals to people with disabilities and adults aged 60 and over.

Self-Help for the Elderly is getting fewer voluntary contributions from the people who receive food through its dine-in and home-delivery programs. Before the pandemic, the nonprofit received 80% of the contributions that it budgeted for, but after the pandemic that fell to “10% on a good day,” Yu said, leading to $1 million in losses for the organization.

“Folks don’t have the capacity to give because everything is so expensive,” Yu said. “It’s like squeezing water from a turnip.”

Food insecurity for older adults — when they don’t have enough to eat and are uncertain how they will get their next meal — is not a “hot topic” for larger funders, Yu added. 

Corporate sponsors have helped fund the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank’s Home-Delivered Groceries program. When the organization lost sponsorship, it was a major factor forcing the bank to scale back the program.

Waning government contributions

In interviews with the San Francisco Public Press, many providers stopped short of criticizing City Hall for its cuts.

“The city’s done the best they can but we also understand they don’t have as much money as they used to,” Davis said.

City Hall is still struggling to financially recover from the pandemic, which created remote-work norms that emptied downtown offices and depressed commercial real estate values and tax revenue. Mayor London Breed signed a $15.9 billion budget on July 27 that closed a projected two-year deficit of nearly $800 million. 

That included shrinking the budget of the Department of Disability and Aging Services, which funds food programs for older adults and people with disabilities, said spokesperson Joe Molica. To maintain services at current levels, plans to expand certain programs were postponed. The department will invest nearly $30.5 million in food programs over the next year.

Food providers and recipients are still reeling from the loss of other public funding as the threat of COVID-19 has receded.

As the novel coronavirus threatened lives and incomes, the federal government increased funds to CalFresh, the state program formerly known as “food stamps,” giving people more money each month to buy groceries. When that emergency funding ended in April 2023, the monthly allotments decreased — for some people, by hundreds of dollars. A spike in food insecurity across the state followed, according to data from the California Association of Food Banks.

The federal government also pumped tens of millions of dollars into food programs serving San Francisco’s older adults and residents with disabilities, but most of that money stopped flowing in 2022. The main funding target had been the Great Plates Delivered program, which brought restaurant meals to homebound seniors and other adults who were especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Disproportionate impacts of food insecurity

In the coming years, nutrition programs for older adults will only become more needed.

For decades, food insecurity in the United States has been on the rise for households with adults age 65 and older, according to a 2023 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is most common among seniors who live alone, at about 11% of those households, up from about 6% in 2001 — the percentage rose sharply amid the pandemic.

Adults 60 and older are the fastest-growing age group in San Francisco and will comprise over 30% of residents by 2030, according to the California Department of Finance. They can face barriers to obtaining healthy food that other groups might not, often related to their physical and financial limitations.

Mobility issues make cooking and shopping for groceries difficult for people who cannot drive or easily handle heavy bags on public transit.

Many older adults also rely on social security as their sole source of income, and those dollars don’t go as far as they used to. Grocery costs over the past four years have risen 25% even as chain supermarkets raked in enormous profits.

“When you’re living on less than $1,300 a month, you have to make some hard choices of what bills you’re going to pay,” said Oswald, of Meals on Wheels San Francisco. Nearly two-thirds of the people the organization serves live on less than that.

People with disabilities, another growing population in San Francisco, can face similar financial challenges when their sole source of income is disability insurance payments from the government. The average monthly payment is about $1,538.

Food insecurity disproportionately affects people of color. In California, mixed-race adults are the most food-insecure racial group, with 50% possessing that status, followed byAfrican Americans, at about 49%, according to a 2023 report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

People of color also suffer from diet-sensitive diseases at elevated levels. In San Francisco, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are hospitalized for diabetes, hypertension or heart disease at rates nine times higher than the citywide average, according to a 2023 report by the Department of Public Health. African Americans are hospitalized about four times above the average. These are also the city’s racial groups with the shortest life expectancies.

‘We pick up the slack’

On a recent Wednesday morning at the Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center, several older adults stood outside, waiting for the doors to open so they could choose free produce at the organization’s pilot food program, which resembled a farmers’ market. They had lined up early because they were worried they might not get all the items they needed, said LaTonya Young, a case manager for residents living on site. She added that there was enough food for everyone that morning.

The free groceries were “a big help” to Rogelio Balbin, 60, and his wife, who recently immigrated to the United States and were still looking for jobs. Balbin had been coming to the food pantry for three months, he said. The grapes and apples were two of his favorite items.

The program is funded through June 2025, and it’s unclear whether it will continue beyond that. As other organizations pare back or shutter their own food programs, it’s likely that this line will fill with more people like Balbin.

For now, “we pick up that slack,” said Young, who takes joy in her work.

“What motivates me every day,” Young said, “is the seniors and seeing their stories. Some come from being homeless but still use the vegetables, and we provide hot meals as well. It’s a wonderful thing to see what we’re doing.”