Jayla Sanchez-Warren had 45 names on her list, all older Coloradans who asked for meals delivered to their homes so they could continue to live on their own.
After a long day on the phone, it was her job to figure out which Adams County residents have no way to get food otherwise and who needs help the most — because there is not enough money to help everyone.
Colorado’s Area Agencies on Aging, with 16 regional offices across the state, are so short on funds this year that waitlists are increasing to thousands of people and programs are at risk of collapsing.
In Adams County, a local nonprofit that uses Area Agency on Aging funds to run a Meals on Wheels program announced at the end of December that it had spent all of its COVID relief dollars and was out of funds. An emergency $50,000 approved by the county commissioners is keeping the program running for a few weeks so the 550 elderly people who depend on the food don’t go hungry.
But that solution is only temporary, and the statewide budget shortfall is expected to continue into next fiscal year.
“I’m doing a lot of praying and I’m doing a lot of hoping for a miracle,” said Sanchez-Warren, who is director of the eight-county Area Agency on Aging that serves the Denver metro area and into the mountains. “It is the worst for those people who need it the most. There are some people that literally struggle to put frozen food in a microwave and then carry it to a place where they can sit and eat it. We’re talking about some pretty frail people.”
Statewide, six of the 16 aging agencies kept waitlists last year and those totaled 4,940 names, according to the Colorado Department of Human Services, which includes the Office of Adult Aging and Disability Services. It would have cost $5.96 million to clear the waitlist.
The Denver area agency has the largest waitlist by far, now with 3,006 names. More than 1,380 have not received services in the past few months, including being turned away when they needed a ride to the doctor.
The Colorado Department of Human Services says it needs more time to figure out accurate data about waitlists and how needs vary across the regions before releasing waitlist information to legislative budget writers, who are already working on next fiscal year’s budget that takes effect July 1.
But it’s clear the cost of the programs is rising as funding is decreasing, the human services department said. The price of food has gone up by about 40%, meaning aging agencies can serve fewer people with the same amount of funding. In the Denver area, it costs about $100 to bring one person meals for a week. On top of that, food assistance benefits, or SNAP, that were extended during the pandemic have now ended for some people. And volunteers and nonprofits that deliver the meals have had to pay higher gas prices during the past year.
All the while, Colorado’s population is growing older. Colorado’s older population is expected to grow by 86% from 2020 to 2050, with the share of the population age 65 or older increasing to 21% from 15%.
Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee wants faster answers
The budget failure has caught the attention of lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee, some of whom questioned whether Gov. Jared Polis’ budget request for next fiscal year provides enough help for the elderly. The budget request includes $53.1 million for the Area Agencies on Aging, a million dollars less than this fiscal year’s $54.1 million.
The aging agencies received $21.2 million in federal coronavirus aid to spend from April 2021 through September 2024. Next year’s budget has no American Rescue Plan Act funding.
And only halfway through this fiscal year, agencies are already struggling to meet demand for services.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, sounded exasperated as she told fellow budget committee members at a December meeting that the funding formula the Colorado Department of Human Services uses to fund the aging agencies has been problematic for years.
We need a number. We don’t have a year. We don’t have a couple of months.
— State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, Joint Budget Committee member
“I’m not patient enough,” she said. “We need a number. We don’t have a year. We don’t have a couple of months. And if the department can’t give a number, I will just poll all the counties and ask them what they think the number should be and we will go from there.”
Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat, was also irritated when the department said it needed more time to figure out how much funding it would need to shore up aging agencies.
“We have individuals who cannot wait a year for their services, so what would be your recommendation in the short term even though you’re reluctant to give us a short-term solution?” Zenzinger questioned Yolanda Webb, director for the Office of Adult Aging and Disability Services in the human services department. “We can come up with it ourselves.”
Webb told lawmakers her division needs time to study the funding shortfalls and come up with a formula to fairly distribute the federal and state dollars so that some regions don’t continue to have waiting lists.
“We simply need a little more time to determine the extent of the problem, and then come back to you with proposed changes that can help us fix the funding issues rather than trying to make a quick fix when we have an entire generation of baby boomers that will require these services now and in the future,” she said. “We’re going to all continue to age.”
Older Americans Act mandates that those 60 and older get services
The agencies, which number about 600 across the nation, are funded mainly by the federal and state government. The federal Older Americans Act, passed in 1965, mandates that the agencies provide nutrition, transportation, medication management and other social services to senior citizens.
The Denver agency, for example, contracts with three meal providers and eight transportation companies, including Uber and Lakewood Rides. Besides Denver, the region includes Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Douglas, Jefferson and Gilpin counties. The rest of Colorado’s counties are served by the state’s 15 other Area Agencies on Aging.
People age 60 and older are eligible for the services, and each state receives funds based on its share of the U.S. population of older people. States are required to target people with the greatest need, particularly those who are minorities, low-income or live in rural areas.
Colorado’s current funding formula dispenses 40% of its dollars based on counties’ population of people age 60 and older, 15% on the population of rural older people, 15% on the number of minority older people, 15% on low-income older people, and 15% on the number of people age 75 and older.
The number of Coloradans served by the Area Agencies on Aging is climbing. It reached 55,710 in fiscal year 2022-2023, up from 53,308 in 2021-2022.
Funding for older Coloradans has fluctuated in recent years
The funding stream for Area Agencies on Aging has been inconsistent for years.
The agencies once received funding through the Senior Homestead Exemption. Counties get state funds based on the number of older people who are eligible for the property tax exemption, but not everyone applies for the exemption, so the excess dollars were given to Area Agencies on Aging. But Colorado lawmakers ended that funding stream in 2020. Then during the pandemic, the agencies received millions of dollars through federal coronavirus relief, called the American Rescue Plan Act.
They were instructed to use it or lose it, so they did, Sanchez-Warren said.
More clients were added to programs, and services were expanded. “We were doing all sorts of things — paying contractors to deliver food, deliver medication, hunt for incontinent supplies in the early days of COVID,” she said. “I thought we would see a spike in services after the COVID emergency was over and everyone was going back to the doctor. It did go down, but not as much as I anticipated.”
Despite the increase in demand and cost, funding for next year is expected to drop to 2018 levels, Sanchez-Warren said.
The Area Agency on Aging for the Denver area, housed within the Denver Regional Council of Governments, received $27.9 million this fiscal year. The agency’s allocation in the proposed state budget for next year is about $20 million.
The agency received $2.9 million in federal rescue money last fiscal year and $5.9 million this fiscal year. There is no ARPA funding for next year.
“People will lose jobs. People are going to lose services,” she said, concerned about sorting through the upcoming round of funding requests from the region’s contractors. “And so we will have to make very tough decisions.”
Senior Hub will cut 200 people from its Meals on Wheels program
Adams County, meanwhile, is seeking volunteers to deliver meals to older residents after the near-collapse of the Senior Hub program. The Denver Regional Council of Governments, along with county officials and Volunteers of America Colorado, are trying to keep meals going this month while the county considers a request from Senior Hub for $400,000 to keep the program afloat until the end of the fiscal year.
“Adams County cares deeply about our older adults, so jumping in and finding a solution is a no-brainer,” Steve O’Dorisio, chair of the commissioners said in the plea for volunteers.
Senior Hub executive director Franklin Ramirez, who took the job five months ago, said the nonprofit should have diversified funding for the Meals on Wheels program instead of relying solely on federal coronavirus aid. Senior Hub received $1.7 in coronavirus aid in the spring of 2022, and spent it at a pace of $110,000 per month.
During the pandemic, the number of older adults receiving meals through the program climbed from 300 to 550.
“We’re not going to be able to serve 550 people,” Ramirez said. “That’s pandemic numbers. We are going to have to go back to pre-pandemic numbers.”
Senior Hub, if it gets enough money from the county to keep operating the meals program, will cut 250 people through attrition, including people who die or move into nursing homes, as well as by asking people who can afford it to pay for their meals, he said.
The nonprofit warned its clients that meals might end Dec. 31. “We sent a letter to our clients saying this is going to be your last meal unless something comes through, the Christmas miracle if you will,” Ramirez said. At the start of the new year, Volunteers of America came through with a week’s worth of meals and is doing the same again this week.
Ramirez also raised $8,000 through a GoFundMe page and is working now to find various sources of funding for the future, which he said the nonprofit should have done sooner. Still, he can’t blame Senior Hub for helping those who asked for help when the nonprofit had the COVID dollars.
“It’s an emergency,” he said. “Do you want us, during the pandemic, to say, ‘You are going to get food and you are not?’”