DHS Faces Meals on Wheels Funding Crisis, 72 Vacancies, and Growing Elderly Homelessness

$300,000 needed to clear Meals on Wheels waitlist; 15 elderly patients await placement in overburdened hospitals due to staffing shortages and insufficient resources

“Until we get serious about really going through this government and cutting the fat and shifting monies into agencies where they need to go, we're going to be having these types of conversations,” said Senator Alma Francis Heyliger, after learning of concerning issues detailed during the V.I. Department of Human Services’ FY2025 budget request presentation Tuesday.

Lawmakers on the Senate Committee of Budget, Appropriations and Finance listened as DHS officials outlined a host of challenges with various programs, generally due to insufficient funding. “The Department has been especially plagued with a large wait list for the elderly nutrition program,” revealed Averil George, DHS commissioner. Commonly referred to as Meals on Wheels, the program has served over 140,000 meals in the last year, with a wait list of 77 individuals in St. Croix and 20 on St. Thomas. There is no waitlist in St. John. “The Department has estimated that $300,000 is required to clear this remaining waitlist,” noted Ms. Averil. Later in the discussion, she told Senator Marvin Blyden that this sum was not included in the department’s FY2025 budget request.

DHS is also struggling with “the growing wait list for entry into [elderly] homes due to the inability to sustain an increased capacity in the current state,” Ms. George told lawmakers. “The waitlist for the homes continues to grow every day.” Among those awaiting placement are roughly 15 “boarders” who are currently housed in the territory’s hospitals. “The department is plagued with limited physical and human resource capacity within our homes, and limited funding to increase our off-Island capacity,” lamented the commissioner. Nonetheless, she told lawmakers that DHS is “exploring every avenue to address this chronic issue.”