Meals on Wheels People will close its Firstenburg dining room and delivery services at the end of June because not enough people show up for lunch.
The number of people age 60 and older dining at the Firstenburg Community Center in the Fircrest neighborhood has dwindled over the last few years, said Julie Piper-Finley, the nonprofit’s director of marketing. The dining room at 700 N.E. 136th Ave., averages 14 to 15 clients each weekday, and about 140 people get meals delivered from that location. It costs $317,751 annually.
“It just didn’t make financial sense to do that,” Piper-Finley said. “We weren’t being good stewards of our donors’ money by keeping that location open.”
By comparison, hundreds of people get lunch every weekday at the Luepke Community Center location, a hub for senior services. Clients disrupted by the closure will have the option of dining at Luepke, 1009 E. McLoughlin Blvd., or getting home-delivered meals that are made in the Luepke kitchen. There are also five other Clark County sites.
The closure will be discussed during a meeting at noon Monday at the Firstenburg Community Center.
Some of the drop in attendance could be attributed to parking issues at the community center. Meals on Wheels services began before the neighboring Cascade Park Community Library was constructed.
Last year in Clark County, 883 home-bound clients received 96,309 meals over the course of the year, Piper-Finley said. Dining rooms served 1,450 clients 41,150 meals. While more people visit the dining rooms, they usually don’t go every day.
Besides Luepke, the Battle Ground Community Center serves meals each weekday and is a pickup location. That location has 384 clients while Luepke has 595 clients. The Washougal Community Center location is open Monday through Thursday, with lunch served Friday at the Camas Senior Center. The Amboy, La Center and Ridgefield locations are open one day each week.
Piper-Finley said Meals on Wheels People serves people age 60 and older in Multnomah and Washington counties in Oregon and Clark County. In its 47 years of operation, there’s never been a waiting list, and people aren’t turned away, she said.
That’s not the case among every location within Meals on Wheels America’s network. Some locations across the country serve fewer people than they did a decade ago and have wait lists. It’s unclear whether the local Meals on Wheels People will see a funding drop due to proposed federal budget cuts. Piper-Finley said Meals on Wheels People’s main source of funding is the Older Americans Act and that funding was reauthorized last fall.
