By Kaylee Hawkins, MIS, Executive Director, Meals on Wheels West and Molly Davies, LCSW, President & CEO, Wise & Healthy Aging
On many mornings in Santa Monica, a volunteer driver from Meals on Wheels West loads up a warm meal and heads out to a homebound neighbor who may not see another person that day. Across town, a care manager at Wise & Healthy Aging checks in on a frail elder navigating a complex medical system alone, connects a family caregiver to support before they burn out, or ensures a senior at a neighborhood center has somewhere to go. These are not luxury services. They are the infrastructure that allows older adults to remain in their homes, their communities, and maintain their dignity. And now they are under threat.
The California Department of Aging is proposing changes to the Older Americans Act (OAA) Intrastate Funding Formula (IFF) - the mechanism that determines how federal aging services dollars are distributed to local programs. The proposed formula would result in a 17% reduction in annual funding for Los Angeles County. That is not an abstraction. It means nearly 396,000 fewer meals served each year, including more than 209,000 fewer home-delivered meals and over 185,000 fewer congregate meals at senior centers. It means reduced access to case management, caregiver support, elder abuse prevention services and more– the full network of services that keep seniors safe, connected, and out of far more costly care settings.
At Meals on Wheels West, the organization is already at a breaking point. In November 2025, we established a waitlist for the first time - and nearly 70 aging neighbors are currently waiting for a meal slot with no opening in sight. Our 2025 data reflect who is waiting: 93% of our clients have low incomes, four out of five live alone, and 88% say home-delivered meals are the direct reason they can remain in their own homes rather than entering far costlier assisted living or care facilities.
At Wise & Healthy Aging, this change would strike at the heart of services that many older adults depend on to live safely, independently, and with dignity. It could weaken case management programs that help seniors remain in their own homes rather than face unnecessary institutionalization. It could undermine elder abuse prevention efforts that alert older adults to emerging scams and give them the tools to protect themselves from exploitation, fraud, and harm. It may also jeopardize access to the WISE Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, a vital lifeline for residents in skilled nursing and assisted living facilities—one that investigates complaints, stands up for vulnerable residents, and helps protect their most basic civil rights in settings where they are too often unheard.
The formula change is not a neutral technical adjustment. The proposed revisions reduce the weighting for low-income older adults from 35% to 20% and eliminate weighting entirely for adults aged 75 and older and for those living alone. These are not incidental data points. They are the strongest predictors of vulnerability: the seniors most likely to need home-delivered meals, senior center access, care coordination, and crisis intervention. In their place, the formula increases emphasis on geography and broad population percentages, treating a 5% increase in a county of a few thousand as equivalent to a 4% increase in a county of over one million older adults. Los Angeles County added 92,000 older adults in a single year, more than any other county in California. The formula, as proposed, would not follow that growth.
Los Angeles County is home to 1.49 million adults aged 60 and older, and nearly 40% of them struggle to meet basic needs. The cost of serving seniors in a dense, high-cost urban region like ours is real and rising. Food, fuel, and labor costs continue to climb. The ombudsman who advocates for a nursing home resident, the case manager who prevents a hospitalization, the congregate meal site that keeps a senior from disappearing into isolation and missing maybe the only meal they will have that day - none of these are cheap to operate, and none of them are reflected in a formula that prioritizes square miles over seniors.
Once implemented, the funding formula will be extremely difficult to reverse. Programs will cut delivery routes and reduce operating hours. Senior centers will serve fewer meals. Waitlists will grow. Family caregivers will lose access to support before they reach a breaking point. And these costs will eventually surface elsewhere: in emergency rooms, in nursing facilities, in the quiet decline of older adults who lost their connection to services before anyone noticed.
Together, our organizations are calling on the California Department of Aging to pause implementation, release the full methodology and data behind the formula, and revise the IFF to account for the true cost of serving seniors - including regional expenses, waitlist demand, and the vulnerability indicators the current proposal discards. We also support a state budget augmentation to ensure no program or senior loses services in the transition.
If you are a Santa Monica resident, a family member of an aging resident, or simply someone who believes this community takes care of its own - please act before the window closes. Submit a public comment to the California Department of Aging at CA2030@aging.ca.gov with the subject line "Public Hearing Comment IFF Proposal" before Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. (Please note that City of Santa Monica administered grant programs are not affected by changes to the IFF).
Funding must follow need - not geography.
Kaylee Hawkins is Executive Director of Meals on Wheels West. Molly Davies is President and CEO of Wise & Healthy Aging. Both organizations serve older adults in Santa Monica and the surrounding Westside community.
Submit comments: CA2030@aging.ca.gov | Subject: "Public Hearing Comment IFF Proposal" | Deadline: May 12, 2026 at 5 p.m.