Charlaine Mazzei acknowledged the truth in a statement Chris Howard made at the last Board of Supervisors meeting: There’s no word yet on whether the Del Norte Senior Center will get the federal dollars it needs to feed more than 800 individuals.
But during a conversation with Redwood Voice Community News last week, Mazzei, the senior center’s executive director, added a couple of caveats. One, things change every day, and two, the Area 1 Agency on Aging will contribute $96,000 to the program.
“That’s going to help a lot, but it really is kind of patching things together because we have no clue when the state is going to do anything with the CDBG,” she said. “They kind of do things in their own time. We can’t reliably say, as of this date, we’re going to have funding.”
The Del Norte Senior Center is part of the Community Action Partnership of Del Norte. According to a “Facts About Federal Funding” breakdown Mazzei posted on the Senior Center’s website, the senior center, Redwood Cove Senior Apartments and Del Norte Mission Possible — which works with the local homeless community — receives between $2.15 million and $2.4 million in federal dollars.
About $250,000 of those federal dollars comes from the Community Development Block Grant, funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated to the county via the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
At the Board’s April 8 meeting, Howard, who represents District 3 and had attended a Del Norte Senior Center Board of Directors meeting, told fellow supervisors about the gap in funding the senior nutrition program is experiencing.
Howard noted that the Board of Supervisors has historically allocated CDBG dollars toward the program.
“As you recall, last year, the Del Norte Healthcare District contributed about $250,000 to keep the meals program going because we have this really odd gap with the funding that usually supports the program, which is the CDBG funds,” he said. “We’re looking at an additional shortfall of about $250,000 to try to get us to just where the CDBG was approved and picked back up towards the end of this calendar year. Our hope is to approach a few more folks within the community, some non profit businesses, to see if there’s an ability to help fill that gap.”
According to Mazzei, the Senior Center will likely have used up the Healthcare District’s contribution by the end of this month. The Area 1 Agency on Aging’s $96,000 contribution will probably last about three months, she said.
“Then we’re back to hoping the CDBG comes through,” she said. “And, if not, we’re having to either find other funding or cut program services.”
The Area 1 Agency on Aging receives money from the state and federal governments annually to allow organizations serving the elderly in Humboldt and Del Norte counties to provide a number of services including meals. The agency has had a contract with the Del Norte Senior Center for many years, Executive Director Maggie Kraft told Redwood Voice Community News on Wednesday.
However, the $96,000 contribution the agency has provided to the Del Norte Senior Center comes from the state and is meant to help modernize nutrition programs, Kraft said. The Area 1 Agency on Aging allocated those state dollars to the Humboldt Senior Resource Center, which operates three meal sites, and the Del Norte Senior Center. According to Kraft, however, the Humboldt Senior Resource Center hadn’t spent all of those dollars. The agency’s biggest fear is that after July 1, the state would have clawed back funding that was unspent, she said.
“We said let’s shift that funding to Charlaine because we know she can spend it and we won’t lose it,” Kraft said. “This money was allocated to the Humboldt Senior Resource Center, but they hadn’t spent it and weren’t going to spend it by July, so we said, ‘Well, let’s put it out there where they can use it.’”
Of the $2.15 million to $2.4 million in federal dollars traditionally allocated to the Del Norte Senior Center, $123,000 comes from the Title III Older Americans Act Elderly Nutrition Program and $25,000 comes from the Nutrition Services Incentive Program, Mazzei wrote in her “Facts About Federal Funding and Our Services” post.
The Del Norte Senior Center had also received $211,700 in Community Services Block Grant dollars and $750,000 in Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, both of which are from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she said.
Mazzei also included the CDBG among the list of funding sources the senior center relies on, adding in parentheses “when awarded.”
Last year, when the senior center’s challenges concerning the CDBG were made public, Mazzei told the Wild Rivers Outpost that the organization’s leaders were seeking contributions from large local community donors.
Mazzei pointed out that the number of seniors relying on meals the program provides had grown from 781 in 2018-19 to 873 in 2023-24.
Last week, Mazzei said that not having the $250,000 in CDBG funding has prompted the senior center to make “pretty drastic cuts,” primarily to its home delivery meals service. One of the program’s three driver positions has been left vacant after a retirement, she said, the senior center has been consolidating the remaining delivery routes as well as communicating with clients who have family or transportation that they may not be able to deliver meals to them.
Though one of the stipulations from receiving Title III dollars is the senior center can’t turn anyone away because of an inability to pay, Mazzei said one suggestion she proffered was instituting a sliding fee scale for those who can pay.
“Right now all contributions are voluntary and we know we have people on the program who can afford to contribute,” she said. “Some do and some don’t, so we need to maybe be a little bit tighter on that. That’s one of the things we’re looking at.”
Mazzei said the senior center has received as little as $15,000 in voluntary contributions from its clients to as much as $25,000.
“We don’t like to say you have to pay for it, but at some point we may have to,” she said. “And we would make sure we did some kind of a review to make sure it’s not a hardship.”
In a March 11 article, Mazzei told Redwood Voice that she was waiting to see how the budget Congress approved to avoid a federal shutdown would impact the funding sources the Del Norte Senior Center relies on. At the time, she said that the uncertainty surrounding whether or not funding would be cut was more worrying than a freeze itself.
On Monday, Mazzei mentioned the senior center’s Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. When Congress approved the continuing resolution on March 15, she said, there was debate over what that meant for the program. Some stated that the allocations from 2024 carried over into 2025, according to Mazzei, while others said the allocations could change.
“Depending on who is right, the state may or may not receive the LIHEAP energy assistance money they expected,” Mazzei said. “So far, they’re telling us they’ve been able to access the payment system at the federal level and they’re getting paid for what they’re submitting, but we don’t know what the final contract amount is going to be.”
Mazzei also pointed to the Trump administration’s recent lay off of LIHEAP staff and said there hasn’t been information on whether the program will continue.
“What it looks like, for 2025 we may be able to coast on what has already been released, but come 2026, there’s nobody there to review the state plans … when Congress allocates funds, there’s nobody there to monitor, nobody there to develop a contract, so it isn’t clear how that’s all going to go down.”
Congress had approved $4.1 billion for the program for fiscal year 2025 and, as of October, about 90 percent of that money had been allocated to individual states, the New York Times reported on April 2. There is still about $378 million to meet the energy needs of low-income families, the Times reported.
Mazzei urged Del Norters to continue to support the senior center and the services it provides by visiting the website.
“Anything we can get in assistance is much appreciated,” she said.
