Meals and Senior Centers

Letter to the Editor Published: July 5, 2008, New York Times To the Editor:. “Bloomberg’s Next Battle: Revamping Senior Centers” (news article, June 30) reports that 44 percent of the city’s senior centers “are underutilized, according to Edwin Mendez-Santiago, the commissioner for the Department for the Aging.” It should be clarified that this figure is based solely on the number of meals served at a center: if a center serves fewer than 90 percent of city-contracted meals, it is deemed “underutilized.” In a survey of services offered at a random sample of senior centers citywide, my office found that at a third of them, more than 25 percent of the elderly participate in social, educational and health programs but do not eat any meals. At one large center, 80 percent of participants do not choose to eat, but do participate in a range of activities including literature and computer classes. At a time when higher food prices are hitting the elderly especially hard, senior centers are key to preventing hunger and malnutrition among the city’s older residents. The Department for the Aging’s own study in 2007 discusses ways to increase meal participation rates “quickly,” including offering appropriate ethnic cuisine. Measuring use by meal participation rates alone does not measure how well a center is addressing the overall needs of a community’s elderly residents and undermines a center’s necessary flexibility. William C. Thompson Jr. Comptroller New York, July 2, 2008