COEUR d’ALENE – Lake City Center is providing vital support to hundreds of area seniors with its meal delivery program.

Now the center is asking the community for help to provide food to even more seniors in the area.

“Our home meal delivery program is for the most vulnerable seniors,” said Nancy Phillips, interim administrative director of Lake City Center. “These are seniors who are homebound. Most of them are isolated. They don’t have family in the area. They’re low income. They can’t feed themselves. Many of them are unable to prepare a meal because of their disability.”

The Lake City Center provides approximately 5,000 meals each month to over 200 seniors in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Dalton Gardens, Hauser and Huetter.

Caring for these community members costs the center about $4,800 a month. Some of the funding comes from the Area Agency on Aging and through the Older Americans Act, which reduces the center’s out-of-pocket costs.

Sage Stoddard, director of the Area Agency on Aging, said nutrition programs in the five northern counties make up about half of the agency’s annual budget. These include home-delivered meal programs and community meals.

The agency reimburses Lake City Center for a portion of each meal, $4.20 for community meals and $4.50 for home-delivered meals. The Idaho Commission on Aging also pays 25 cents per meal.

“That doesn’t cover the cost of food,” Stoddard said. “I know the senior centers rely on donations from the community to cover all of the costs. Every senior center has different costs.”

There is not enough money to deliver meals to the homes of all the seniors in the area who need them, Phillips said. In this situation, seniors are prioritized based on a points system.

“Everyone on the list is housebound, but some are more at risk than others,” Phillips said. “It’s a really tough point system because you have to figure out who’s worst off.”

Seniors may be removed from the waiting list if spaces or resources become available.

“If I have enough money, I can grab a person,” Phillips said.

The Lake City Center also wants to provide meals to seniors on the waitlist, Phillips said, but there are no outside funds to cover the costs, putting additional strain on the center.

Providing five meals to a senior on the waitlist costs the center about $70 a week, Phillips said. That figure represents more than just the base cost of the food used to prepare the meals. It also takes into account the cost of electricity and labor needed to prepare the meals, as well as the cost of transporting the food to the senior who needs it.

“The hard part for us is that we don’t like to say no,” says Woody McEvers, who was involved in Lake City Center during his time on the Coeur d’Alene City Council. He was recently appointed mayor of Coeur d’Alene. “Just saying no doesn’t feel right.”

Although the center also receives funding from other entities, including the City of Coeur d’Alene County, McEvers said it relies on donations from the community to stay afloat.

“It’s up to people whether they think it’s important,” he said.

McEvers said delivering meals to homebound seniors is a moving experience. The volunteers who deliver the meals often build relationships with the seniors and get to know them on their tours.

“For some people, the only contact they have is the delivery of their food,” he said. “It used to be about food, but today it’s become much bigger. It’s about safety and connections.”

To learn more about the home meal delivery program or to donate to Lake City Center, visit www.lakecitycenter.org.