Ninety-three homebound seniors across Santa Monica and the surrounding Westside are waiting for someone to bring them a hot meal, and the nonprofit trying to feed them says that number could hit 100 by the end of August. Meals on Wheels West created the waitlist in November 2025 — the first time in more than 50 years the organization has had to turn away low-income clients seeking subsidized meal delivery.
Executive Director Kaylee Hawkins told the Santa Monica Daily Press that the 93 seniors waiting represent people whose independence is hanging in the balance. Meals on Wheels West serves Santa Monica, Venice, Pacific Palisades, Marina del Rey and Malibu, delivering meals and wellness checks each week to homebound seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. Clients who can pay out of pocket can start receiving meals immediately for $10 each, according to Meals on Wheels West, but low-income applicants seeking subsidized meals are placed on the waitlist instead.
Hawkins said the core problem lies with Washington rather than City Hall, pointing to the Older Americans Act — the roughly $1.059 billion-a-year federal program that serves as the backbone of senior nutrition funding nationwide, per the article. She said the law was written for a smaller and younger senior population than exists today, and that funding formulas have not caught up to changing demographics. Federal Older Americans Act funding, she noted, has not grown as fast as the number of qualifying seniors, while rising costs have made it harder for everyday donors to contribute at past levels. Donors have also shifted support toward recovery from the 2025 fires.
Who's Waiting, and Why It Matters
The median age among Meals on Wheels West clients is 78. Nearly eight in ten live with a disability, and 83% say they cannot safely cook for themselves. Eighty-four percent report eating alone almost always or often, and more than one in five clients are veterans or spouses of veterans. Nearly one in four have experienced homelessness. For 53% of clients, a Meals on Wheels West volunteer or caller is one of the only people checking on them at all.
Beyond the food itself, the organization says its goal is to identify small problems before they become medical emergencies, delivering referrals to community resources alongside each meal. Its Friendly Caller program offers additional social connection, and separately, the nonprofit runs a twice-weekly Community Connections Friendly Calling initiative launched in 2020 to combat isolation among homebound clients, according to Mon Ami. It costs an average of $3,360 to feed one client for a full year, and the organization fills more than 40 delivery routes each day.
A Statewide Funding Formula Could Make It Worse
The waitlist crisis is unfolding as California weighs a change that advocates warn would hit Los Angeles County especially hard. Leadership from Meals on Wheels West and Wise & Healthy Aging reported in May that proposed revisions to the state's Older Americans Act Intrastate Funding Formula would cut Los Angeles County senior funding by 17%, eliminating nearly 396,000 meals annually, including more than 209,000 home-delivered meals, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. The California Department of Aging's proposal would shrink the funding weight given to low-income older adults from 35% to 20%, while completely eliminating extra weighting for adults 75 and older and those living alone — factors local advocates argue are the strongest indicators of senior vulnerability.
The stakes are magnified by scale. Los Angeles County is home to roughly 1.49 million adults aged 60 and older, with nearly 40% struggling to afford basic necessities, and the county added 92,000 older residents in a single year — the largest such increase of any California county, per the same report. By 2030, nearly one in four county residents is expected to be 60 or older. Hawkins has urged residents to press elected officials to plan for an aging population, warning that local government partners have funding that has not kept pace with demand.
A National Pattern of Waitlists
Santa Monica's waitlist fits into a national picture. U.S. Senate testimony from Meals on Wheels America in May found that one in three local Meals on Wheels providers nationwide maintains a waitlist, with seniors waiting an average of four months for deliveries, and 78% of surveyed providers said they would need to establish or expand waitlists if government funding is cut, according to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. Nationwide, more than 46,000 older adults were on waitlists for home-delivered meal programs in late 2025, as reported by Meals on Wheels America, which calculates that meeting true demand nationally would require funding the Older Americans Act at $2.285 billion a year — more than double current levels.
In June, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2027 Labor-HHS spending bill with modest increases for Older Americans Act programs, though advocates continue pushing for the larger nutrition funding target, per Senior Services. Research cited by the Wisconsin Rapids City Times found that every $1 invested in Meals on Wheels programs yields $3.87 in health system savings by preventing costly emergency room visits and nursing facility admissions — an argument advocates say makes the funding gap especially difficult to justify.
What Comes Next Locally
Meals on Wheels West has set a goal of moving its ten most vulnerable, longest-waiting neighbors into meal delivery by the end of 2026, though Hawkins has cautioned that moving ten clients off the waitlist is a starting point rather than a solution. The organization estimates it would need roughly $312,000 in new annual funding to clear the current list of 93 entirely. The nonprofit is also a grantee of Santa Monica's Human Services Grant Program, which is in the final year of its four-year funding cycle, prompting the group to request increased city allocations going forward, according to a discussion on r/SantaMonica.
Hawkins has invited local businesses to sponsor meals or connect the organization with workplace giving programs, and the nonprofit is directing donations to mealsonwheelswest.org/endthewaitlist. Whether the county or city step in with emergency funding before the state's proposed formula changes take effect remains an open question — one that will shape how many of the Westside's oldest and most isolated residents get fed in the months ahead.
