Feeding the Forgotten: Hunger and Hope for Boomers in Affluent L.A. and across the USA

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt, and. Oh, that's right. My partner, Phil Proctor is somewhere in the Caribbean.Some baby boomers are up against loneliness, isolation, just getting food. I went to a community meeting in my neighborhood here in Los Angeles, and this lovely person came up and spoke about Meals on Wheels.Kaylee Hawkins, executive director of Meals on Wheels West that serves the west side of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Hi, Kaylee. How are you doing?

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Baby boomers are turning 80 years old, which is pretty amazing. And boomers are often termed as the pig in the python, which is very flattering.The baby boom Post World War II, and there was a boom of births, and now here we are, old codgers. This crush of people, demographically, it is. An enormous amount of people are not financially secure.

Correct.

That's where you guys come in. It is so important to participate in the census every 10 years.Not only does it determine your representation in Congress, but it also determines funding. And that includes Meals on Wheels.

It does.

There are 1.6 million seniors, actually a little more than that, living alone in the Los Angeles area. That's a full 20%, 1/5. And the total population of adults that are 60 plus in Los Angeles, 8,600,000. And nutrition is critical.It is 1.3 million people here in Los Angeles alone is experiencing limited or uncertain access to adequate food, or what's known as marginally food secure. What you do with the Meals on Wheels is to try to feed these people that are slipped into this.

Slipped into this chapter of their life where they're met with the compounding challenges of not only their world getting smaller. Right.We talked about the isolation, but also the benefit we have now in today's society, where we're at a point where people are able to live on their own. They're not having to go to assisted living to get their basics. Programs like Meals on Wheels can keep them in their homes.And so it's all of that met with the pounding challenges of not having food security, not having the funding to be able to choose between paying your rent, your medical bill, or your food.And so that's where programs like Meals on Wheels step in and are able to give them that access to nutrition and be able to make sure that they're having their basic need met of having nutritious food brought to their door.

I don't think people think about this much, but it's astonishing to be the wealthiest nation in history, and yet food insecurity in the ultimate of first world situations. 100% where we grow the food. There was an article where you were quoted in Politico. The headline was Meals on Wheels Going off the Rails.This was published in November, so it's not long ago. President Donald Trump's Washington has Meals on Wheels driving blind.The program, a web of about 5,000 local providers that feed more than 2 million seniors annually, took a series of hits. What were some of these hits? What happened?

Yeah, the compounding challenges that we've seen at the federal level have had that ripple effect in the senior nutrition space and for a lot of other social service providers. And so that article specifically came out when the SNAP cuts happened in the beginning of November.That was also at a time where our program in Santa Monica had to choose to move to a wait list, which was the first time in our history of our organization's 50 plus years serving our community.

So people who call saying, I need

food, that was the exact moment we had to turn the pipe off. And that was just because our program was outgrowing our resources. And that moment right there was right around the corner.It happened the exact same time. But we've been seeing the pressures, the compounding pressures of changes happening at the federal level.Also, just the unique landscape that we've been in Los Angeles with having massive ICE raids and demonstrations happening, the effects of the Palisades fire and the Eaton Fire, like the compoundment that we went through as a region, all of those had secondary effects.And so in that political article, that was me representing the multiple providers in the greater LA community talking about these are the unique challenges we're facing in this LA region. But it's not unique to just the Meals on Wheels West.

West side of Los Angeles is a well to do area. You're not even really in an economically depressed area, and yet you're on a wait list.

Yep.

You mentioned ICE as the factor. Do you think that some seniors are not going out because they're afraid? Now?

It was a multitude of things. We would have had some neighbors. The west side is also very diverse.And so we had some neighbors who were, for themselves, afraid to go out to source food, or maybe they worked with a family member or a caregiver who now felt uncomfortable coming to their house to help them. And so all of those second, maybe it was a neighbor helping them and now that neighbor is afraid. Exactly.

That's crazy.

Yeah. And so we would see those types of concerns come to play.And when someone's able to deliver food to your door, that's usurping the challenge of the concern.

Wow. I so admire you personally for what you've done, because this, you are really doing the right thing.And you come from a background of just helping people and animals. Was the ASPCA you were working with?

Oh, I worked closely with the aspca, but I used to work for a national animal nonprofit called Best Friends Animal Society. Huge footprint here in Los Angeles.And I was lucky to really have that be the start of my professional career and really where I learned the land of nonprofits.

You helped raise the city of Los Angeles Animal shelter save rate, meaning not euthanizing animals from 57.7% to 89.7%. How'd you save so many animals lives?

Oh, my gosh. I wish I could give you the easy answer, but it was years of working together with rescue groups and other community partners.One of the things that I'm always grateful for from my experience at Best Friends is that you can come up with an audacious goal and write your way to it. This was. The founders of Best Friends had this vision of making Los Angeles a nokil city. And it was the right place, the right time.We were able to move into a city owned facility where we were in a public private partnership, and we were able to operate essentially their seventh animal shelter. And we were sourcing all of our animals only from the city shelter system.And from there, it was just putting the programs and practices in place that were the best in animal welfare at the time and learning from those and creating new best practices. That was five years of grinding.

You got these animals out of the city shelters into your facility where you were able to care for them and then help place them.

Correct. Yeah. While also working with the city shelter on their programming while also lifting other rescue partners who had more capacity.Like, it was a very interesting time of my life and one that really taught you how to move fast and build a plane while you fly it. At one point, we were helping 10,000 animals a year just from our direct programming.And then another tens of thousands just through funding we were providing to partners or working with the city on their programming.

Wow.

Yeah.

Congratulations. Now you're helping human beings. I don't think people realize just how many people are out there who are alone and in need.If someone's listening and they're in a neighborhood right now.

Yeah.

Let's just say an average neighborhood in Los Angeles, and they look around up and down the street at the residences, what do you see? And how do you identify those people that are in need.

I just take a general city block in the city of Santa Monica. I think about it on my drive home. I live two miles away from the office. I'm probably passing a couple hundred of our clients on my route home.Depending on if I take a couple

of hundred people, a couple of hundred

of people just from going one side of Santa Monica to the next like a mile.

People think Santa Monica is all well to do and it is in many ways. But that kind of need still exists.

The need is there. I mean we're really lucky.In the city of Santa Monica there's protections like rent control in place and other avenues that have protected people's ability to stay in the place they call home and not be financially priced out.But it still puts them in that pitch point of I'm still having to choose between paying rent, which is while under market value still high for the income that I'm bringing in. I'm still having to pay medical bills, I'm still having to pay my heat bill. And so there is out for us at Meals on Wheels West.It is just under, I believe three out of every four of our clients are in the city of Santa Monica alone.

Is it a higher density in lower income neighborhoods?

Higher density in multi unit spacing. So I would say where we have a lot of multi union housing that tends to be where rent control is in place.Santa Monica also has some buildings that are dedicated to helping individuals that are of an older age that are lower income. And so the concentration is definitely in those spaces.But in our own community that our building is in, we're in the historic Pico neighborhood district and we have tons of clients there that have lived in the community for 50 plus years. And now we're at the point where they need a little assistance to get by.

It's just an average profile of somebody that's in need. So people understand and recognize the people that they live around.

Sure.

What they may be able to help with.

Thinking about a couple of the clients that we've met with recently. Charles is one of my favorite clients. He is a veteran, served in Vietnam War.He also was formally unhoused shortly after his deployment or coming back from his deployment. So he went through his like 30s and 40s living and experience of being formally unhoused.Got back on his feet, is in a rent controlled space in Santa Monica. He's such a pay it forward guy. He helped a former service military member, she was in her 40s who had double breast cancer.He let her move into his apartment and he was her caregiver and got her signed up for Meals on Wheels while she was going through her medical treatment. Because we do have some subsect program where we'll help people who are temporarily needing it during their medical stay or their medical sprints.Charles is a like perfect example of someone that he's served our country. He's gone through the lowest of lows. He's able to finally get on his feet.And he found himself at a point where he had to choose between paying his rent or buying food. And so that's where our program came in and helped. And so we're able to supply him with food and.

And he reached out.

Yep, he reached out. He's been a client of ours for a while, loves talking about it.So he'll come with me to veterans events, for example, and share his story and is a really big advocate for the cause. So he's. He's amazing.

In your area, which is primarily Santa Monica, but also.

Yeah.

Do you handle the Palisades?

We go all the way up to Malibu, all the way down to Marina del Rey.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

Beautiful, beautiful drive.

This is the last place you'd think there'd be so much need. How many people is your area serving?

We ran our report for 2025. We had 727 clients that we serve.

725 people that you're feeding five days a week.

We're providing five meals a week.

Five meals a week. And would you double up on the weekends for them or are they on their own?

Before some of our funding challenges came into place, there was some weekend meals. And that's one of the cuts we've had to make just to maintain the volume of program that we have.

Because people don't need to eat on the weekends. How much do these meals cost?

We're looking at an average client's choice. Just food bill day, no inflation.We're looking at it being just under $40 a week for the true cost of the food being prepared at our off site kitchen and delivered to our office.

Per client?

Per client.

That adds up. Who pays for this? There's the Older Americans act, which is a federal program which supports these programs.

Correct.

A Brown University study showed that the home delivered meals funded through the OAA not only reduce hunger and malnutrition among older adults, but it provides significant health, social benefits to both recipients and their caregivers.Meals on Wheels, in a way, is a first responder to a lot of people who wouldn't see a human Being other than these volunteers that are delivering every day.

Absolutely.

So what happens in an exchange like that? What's the mutual benefit to the volunteer delivering the meal and to the recipient?

Yeah.One of the things I was so enamored by, you know, I've only been in this role since the fall, so I am very new to the Meals on Wheels landscape as a staff member. But I was really blown away by the amount of people who are volunteering really hard time of the day. We're talking Mondays at noon.You know, not everyone's around Mondays at noon to be able to do this. And we're really fueled by the volunteers who are able to help us deliver 40 plus routes a day. So we have 40 plus people going out every day.

How many deliveries per person they'll do

8 to 10, 8 to 12, depending on how condensed we have that space. We're going to serve, on average, between four and 450 people a day.

What do you tell the volunteers when they knock on these doors?

You know, we're really lucky that volunteers gravitate towards us because they not only see the first line benefits of we're going to get food to people, but it's really those relationships and being that connective tissue in the neighborhood. And so for a lot of the volunteers, they've been on their same route, they've had their same clients. They know when someone's birthday is.They know all these little nuances of the relationship you would have as if they were your neighbor next door.And so when they're delivering to their eight to 12 people, it is a little bit of a rush against the clock because you have to make sure that you're delivering the meals and also making sure that they're within temperature and, you know, all of the, like, health department code pieces of it. Right. Like there's still government oversight for programs like this.

Well, it's food.

It's food. Yeah, exactly. You know, doordash is not sending your food out on 12 plus people routes.

And cocoa's not a very good conversationalist.

Exactly, exactly. Coco's not getting up those stairs. And so for a lot of the volunteers, they know their people, they know their routines, they know their habits.And so they're meeting them at the door, they're giving them their food.For some of those clients they've been around for so long, and they have that mutual respect and relationship that sometimes they are taking their food in and setting it on the counter for them.But regardless of where they're meeting their client, they're Spending that couple minutes just checking in to say, hey, Ms. Sally, how are you feeling today? I know you're feeling a little under the weather last week doing a little bit of a visual check not only of the human, but also their surroundings.I call it the boiling frog method. Like, it is easy for things to start to deteriorate slowly if people aren't paying attention.And for the clients, our volunteers really are the ones paying attention to what's happening in their day to day lives because the individual may not realize that something is happening to them and maybe they're starting to lose weight or maybe that boo boo that they had on their arm is really starting to gouge. Those are things that are really easy to look over, especially when you're by yourself and like your world is very isolated.And so not only are the volunteers spending that time getting the check in, making sure that those individuals are doing well, but they're also just the person that they see that day. For 80% of our clients specifically, they don't live with anybody else.So if they don't have that community outside of Meals on Wheels, which many of them don't, they don't have family locally or maybe they're not close with their neighbors, like this is their person for that day. It's been a literal lifeline and a lifesaver for a lot of clients.

There could be onset dementia occurring and no one knows exactly. And unfortunately the person themselves don't know exactly. Dealing with dementia. You're not a trained health professional.You're still the eyes and ears of the outside world.

We are serving a population that may be more medically frail or closer to the end of their life than your everyday day to day intergenerational volunteer experience. And so we've had staff and volunteers come across clients who have maybe fallen and they fell a day or two ago.And this is the first time time that someone has taken the time to realize. I know that Joe usually is at home, he never leaves and it's weird that he hasn't answered the door. And I saw him on Monday, Today's Wednesday.We had someone who serves on our board who's been a longtime dedicated volunteer herself. Tell me a story over lunch the other week that she had a client that she was very close with. She saw on that Monday.When she went to deliver on Wednesday, she wasn't answering the door. She knew something was wrong and she heard the faintest cry for help and was able to call the fire department. The fire department came and got her.She had fallen out of her bed and was under her bed and had been there since Monday. Later day. And now we're talking Wednesday afternoon at this point.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. And so they were able to provide her care and get her back home. And she was still able to stay in the place that she called home.She didn't have to move to assisted living. If no one else was coming, she would have been there.

A lot of people resist leaving their home. They don't want to go to an assisted living facility.I've seen enough of them to know that there are reasons why unless you have a trip, tremendous amount of money and can afford to live in assisted situations where they check on you, where there are pull strings at the toilet and at the bed so you can call on somebody. Now there is technology. They can have an alert on their. But if they don't have family.

Yeah.

And they're experiencing dementia. Does a volunteer ever say, hey, you know, have you thought about maybe getting an alert around your neck?Or there must be a line where you can't really intrude.

The organization had foresight years ago to recognize that we have a responsibility outside of food to our clients. And so we do have someone. I call it Case Working Light. So there are very formal casework systems out there that help individuals in these programs.Instead, what Meals on Wheels west has done is we've built a social safety net where we work with 68/Social Service Providers.And while we're not court appointed to help them in any way, we at least can get them those resources and be that first line of defense and connect them with more formal resources that can have a little bit more oversight, especially if there's stuff like cognitive decline or other concerns that are coming into play that are more sensitive and need more of a professional touch.

Do we have Phil Proctor? We may have Phil Proctor. Phil, there you are.

Can you hear me?

Oh, very well. How are you?

I am here in Puerto Rico. Bienveno de Puerto Rico. But I'm not going to be able to interact with you because the connection here is terrible, or how do we say it in Spanish?Terrible. So I'm enjoying the show very much. I'm very proud of this young lady.This is an extremely important subject and I may be part of your program sooner than I expect. I'm going to continue listening, but I can't participate right now.So I love you all and I will enjoy hearing the rest of your interview with this lovely lady.

Thank you, Phil. We always knew about Meals on Wheels, but I'd like to volunteer.

Great.

And I'd like to do it in my neighborhood because I bet you there are a bunch of people in my neighborhood that I'm not even aware of.

You'll be so surprised.

Yeah, and I want to pass it forward because God forbid, when I'm like Phil's age, hope to God somebody's knocking on my door. These are all the factors you're facing the Trump regime's cutbacks. 10% of your operating budget is derived from federal and state funding.

Correct.

Where does the other 90% of the money to pay for these meals come from?

Oh, it's the community. It is the community. So not every, not any Meals on Wheels operates the same.You'll have a Meals on Wheels program across LA county that's fully funded by the Older Americans act. And you'll have programs like ours that are like contractors of contractors to get OAA money. And so it is a very fragmented space.Meals on Wheels west specifically has really leaned into its everyday community members that are helping fund those meals. It's foundations and other local philanthropic supporters. That is where the bulk of our money comes from.

Why are you not set up uniformly across the country, like for more federal money?

The pool of federal money and the amount of service that are happening are two different ball games.So like in LA county, for example, when I was trying to figure out how many meals are actually being served in LA county county, the only number I could come up with was what was actually being funded through the OAA funding, and that was 1.44 million meals. So if you think about programs like ours where only 10% of our meals are being funded through there, there's a ton of other meals being served.They're being funded by private citizens. There are some programs that do a cost share model with their clients, so if they can't afford all of it, they pay some of it.And the rest of it is covered by donations. But we are an organization that has primarily survived off of the philanthropic donations from either foundations, individuals, family foundations.

So I imagine a lot of your job is hustling.

A lot of my job is chatting with people, finding ways for them to invest in their neighbors.

And how do they do that?

Meals on Wheels America has a really great tool on their website.So if you just Google Meals on Wheels America, find a service provider and plug your zip code in and it'll tell you exactly who your service provider is for your community. And they're almost all of them are 501s. So almost all of them take donations A lot of them thrive off tax deductible. Tax deductible, Very important.A lot of them thrive off of the generosity of volunteers. And some of them are programs like for example, Jewish Family Services. That's actually someone we collaborate with a lot.They are a provider of home delivered meals, so they run a Meals on Wheels program. But they're also so much more. Right.And so sometimes it's Meals on Wheels programs are folded into some of the social service programs that are in our own backyard and we don't realize they're happening. We're a unique situation. We're standalone. This is our focus. And so we focus on serving our community that way.

Interesting. And if somebody needs food delivered, what is this wait list about and how long is it?

Meals on Wheels west, specifically. We are now in the majority of Meals on Wheels providers across America.It was a trend we never thought we would be on of having to establish a weight first time in the organization's 50 plus year history. We put that wait list in place in November and that was because we were seeing, much like we're seeing with the.The silver wave or whatever the language is that we're talking.

The pig in the python.

Yeah, exactly. What we're seeing there is that the demand for our services continues to outpace either people no longer needing our services and the resources.And so when I came in, we were seeing about a 200% enrollment for every 100% of people that were leaving our program, whether it was they left this earth, they relocated, maybe they moved in with a family member, you know, et cetera. And so we just got to that point where we were outpacing our ability to have like a very manageable client amount.And so for us, we have the logistics and the operations down, we could easily take in 40 to 50 more clients. What we need is the funding to do that.

How big is the waitlist?

So we put our wait list in, in place in the beginning of November and when I looked at it this morning, we're just shy of 50 individuals.

So there are 50 people in your

area, in just my area that need

food and can't get it correct.

The average wait list time is around 100 plus days. And so we are collaborating with other social services providers, trying to match them with resources that might have a more immediate pipeline.The thing that is always interesting to keep in mind is that typically individuals are coming to a program like Meals on Wheels because the traditional pathways of like going to the food bank, for example, if getting to the food bank is A challenge. Okay. Food banks, some of them will deliver. But then it's also just the ability to prepare food.As you're getting older, the ability to prepare your food and your meals safely is a challenge. And so that's where we run into. We're referring people to programs that make sense for them.But at the end of the day, a program like Meals on Wheels might be the only one that makes sense for them.

Right.If I could call as a potential donor and say, is there someone in my neighborhood is on a waiting list and how much would it cost for me to give them a month's worth of food? So they're off that waiting list right away?

Yeah.

Is that a way in which to do it?

Listen, I'm creative. I'll do any of it. We actually did. We did launch in a way to really paint the picture of how easy it is to support a neighbor.We're currently in our Nourish a Neighbor campaign.And so if we look at the dollar amounts of just the pure food costs, not taking into account our stuff like lights and electricity and all those other pieces, that is also covered by the support of generous donors, it's only around $280 a month for someone to receive food. So that is like our at cost thing. So if people are donating $280 and nourishing their neighbor, we're able to move more people into food security.

Well, rounded off at 300 to help cover your overhead because the volunteers are paying for their own gas and their car. But someone could donate tax deductible money to Meals on Wheels to cover the costs of this person while they're on the wait list.

Yeah, in theory, with our program specifically. I can't speak for other providers for Meals on Wheels West. Listen, people want to step up and help their neighbors. I want to, too.I just don't have the funding right now. So we're. We're open to any and all possibilities.

Oh, that's great that you are. So if someone's on the west side.

Yeah.

They could contact Meals on Wheels West.

Mealsonwheelswest.org is the URL. We have a very bright orange and blue logo. Hard to miss.

Okay, well, there's a. There's a practical way to help. Why? This is a growing problem.Fertility rates have gone down from 2.1 children to 1.7 children, which does not sustain the population.

Correct.

Which means less people to help more people in need.

Correct.

We saw that coming with Social Security back in the early 60s. There was something like four to five people working for every retiree to paying into the system. Now we're down to like two working people.

Yep.

It may get down to one to one, which is clearly unsustainable.

Yay for my generation.

Yes.According to Pew Research is people born in the 50s, which is the central decade of the baby boomer births, showed a positive margin for Kamala Harris. The age group just beneath them, like the 40 to 55 year olds, they were the Trump voters, but the young kids, now, they're far more leaning liberal.

Sure.

As much as people like to deride the boomers, let's not forget the 60s.

Sure.

People in the streets stopped the war. Women's rights, voting rights. So many things happened under the boomers. Progressiveness. Boomers and young people have a lot in common.What's the average age of the volunteers delivering food?

That's interesting.You know, one of the observations that some of the individuals in my interview panel talked about was that we have a Venn diagram that's essentially a circle that our clients, that our volunteers and our donors tend to be of the older generation.But in my own observations, while, yes, it does make sense that there are a lot of volunteers that maybe are retired and have time during the middle of the day, we have really been diversifying not only our volunteer experience, but also our donor experience. And so we are seeing people from younger generation stepping up and saying this program, just like you and I.Like you mentioned, your dad delivered for Meals on Wheels. My grandmother was a Meals on Wheels recipient back in metro Detroit for many years of my life.Like, we all know someone who has had some sort of impact in this space, and they can really relate to knowing that there's other people in these communities that need the support. And so we've had everything from moms and like, their kids during the school year, like when summer's out, going out and delivering.And they have their clients that love seeing the kids. There's a handful of people. I'm a millennial. A handful of millennials that'll take time out of their workday to come.You know, they have their flexible schedules or their contracting, and so they've got time. And so we really do run a full gamut of age ranges that participate. And they all do it for, you know, the love of taking care of their neighbors.

I've always appreciated elders. They're way down the road ahead of me.

Sure.

And it would be nice to see that young people paying forward.

Sure.

They get something out of it because if the person they're Helping one of them is bound to be interesting, right?

Oh, such interesting, interesting stories, right? Yeah.

How old do you have to be to be a volunteer?

Well, to be able to drive, you have to be able to be a driver's license holder. But some people do pair up with their parents.

It could be a high school thing, it could be a college thing.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the areas I'm thinking about all the things we need to spend our time on. We're really great with volunteer delivery drivers.We obviously will welcome people into the program. People move, life changes. People go on vacation, they end up in Puerto Rico, can't reach them, you know, like, it happens.But there's definitely space for us to a just also improve how we bring people into our fold. Because there are so many other ways people get involved.One of those is we have a friendly caller program, which, when I think about the barriers to volunteering, you don't need a car to pick up the phone. And so we have a program where people could have more qualitative relationships with clients.

So instead of delivering meals, they call on the phone, say, how you doing?

It's a phone, a friend moment. Yeah. That kicked off a lot of Meals on Wheels programs and other senior service programs started putting that in place when the pandemic kicked in.Right.

That would be really fascinating for a high school kid to be able to call and speak to somebody completely different from them. For kids that never had the wonderfulness of a grandparent.

Sure.

And just calling up on the phone, you could do it for an hour a week or whatever. It's not overwhelming.

It's pretty straightforward. I mean, they. When I came in, one of the first things they shared was it's only about a 10 to 15 minute phone call.A lot of clients don't want to have that long of a chat. And we'll even provide them prompts.If you have a little bit of phone phobia or you're a little bit nervous getting to know someone over the phone, we'll send some prompts out and say, here's some conversation starters.

LA is such a diverse county. You got people up in the mountains, you got people in the middle of nowhere.There's probably need for volunteers in some of the more challenging places.

Absolutely. Yeah. Not every Meals on Wheels program is created the same, and so there's definitely some that need that assistance.

And the food quality is good.

It is. I've tried the meals as someone who has a ton of dietary restrictions. There was finally a meal that came in and it was the end of the day.And it wasn't going to, you know, it was going into the weekend, so we weren't able to save it. And so I tried it and I was like, this is, this is great.

You're allowing people to maintain their independence.

Yes.

That's huge.

That's the cornerstone of the program.

And as far as benefit to the volunteer, it's really paying forward, of course, and there's such benefit to that. Louisiana county has a four year plan. Santa Monica has an elder plan.They're at least addressing the challenges that we're facing with this growing elder population. How do you complement that, for example,

the City of Santa Monica plan? Our former executive director, before I came in, he was an advisor on that.So there was a lot of first hand experience from programs like Meals all wheels for it for LA County, LA City Joint Plan.I think what it really does is continue to inform our government planning process that we're going to be seeing an onslaught of aging individuals and that plan needs to ramp up. One out of every four LA county residents will be 60 years or older in 2030. That's just for LA County. That's not even talking about the national

stat population aged 85 and older, 10% in 2020 to 12% in 2030, 22% by 2016. Longevity is increasing because of increased health care. Boomers, unlike the previous generation, are more educated, so they've got more going on.They're more cognizant of their health. These are wonderful numbers. But it's more of a challenge for people like you trying to feed them all.

Yep.

You're not even trying to maintain status quo. You're trying to meet the growing challenge.

Exactly.

At a time when the federal government is less compassionate.

Yeah.

Hopefully that will change.

Sure.

Amazing. Kaylee Hawkins, executive director of Meals on Wheels west serving the west side of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Thank you so much.

Thank you for coming. Appreciate it.

You're doing such a beautiful thing.

Thank you, folks.

It's one of the most rewarding volunteer things you can do.

Absolutely.

If you look around where you're living right now, you could probably see where someone is needing some company and a little food.

Yep.

Thanks again folks. Really appreciate you joining us. It's the Sexy Boomer show. You can hear all of our shows at sexyboomershow. Com. I'm Ted Bonnitt.Thanks so much for listening and help out Meals on Wheels. You'll be glad you did. Bye. Bye.