Twice a month, over 500 seniors in Long Beach are greeted with smiling, masked faces from volunteers bringing fresh, free, ready-to-cook groceries straight to their doorstep.
The seniors, most of them from low-income areas in Long Beach, are also offered help navigating various programs they might qualify for—CalFresh, Social Security, Medi-Cal, General Relief, credit recovery and more.
These invaluable services are spearheaded by Help Me Help You (HMHY), a Long Beach nonprofit created in 2004 to reduce homelessness and improve the senior community’s social, financial and emotional wellbeing.
“We try to provide as many services as possible for the seniors and their households,” said Brandon Fallon, CalFresh Program Manager for Help Me Help You. “A lot of the times a single household can benefit from multiple programs.”
The nonprofit operates nine grocery grab n’ goes throughout Los Angeles County at community and school locations in Long Beach. Most of the grocery locations are placed at elementary schools since, according to the HMHY website, 55% of children in Long Beach belong to low-income families.
For a list of grocery grab n’ go locations, visit helpmehelpu.org/ggng
HMHY introduced its home delivery service during the COVID-19 pandemic to help those who were most at risk of getting sick by leaving their homes. The program mostly focuses on seniors, who were most at risk, and they now also deliver twice a month to families in need who have a child attending Cesar E. Chavez Elementary School.
The services have been reduced from weekly grocery deliveries to twice a month since fall of 2021, as COVID grants and funding have slowly diminished, though the need for food equity has only risen, Fallon said.
“Now that the pandemic is winding down, inflation is revving up, so the need to help people eat healthy groceries [or] to afford the same amount of groceries has been impacted,” Fallon said. “Pandemic funding is winding down. We’re hoping to increase community awareness about the food delivery program and the need for additional funding to replace those contracts and to expand service.”
The program serves 500 seniors weekly at the moment—well over 1,500 deliveries a month—and consistently receives new requests and referrals. The nonprofit is based out of the Multi-Service Center in Long Beach, though they often receive calls from throughout Los Angeles, Wilmington, Carson and even one senior in New York who needed food.
The clientele is incredibly diverse, about 25% are African American, 25% are Latino, 21% are white and 29% are Cambodian, Filipino or other ethnic groups. More than half the clients live in the zip codes with the lowest average income in Long Beach.
Fallon explained that any funding received will be spent trying to get back up to one delivery per week, per person though the ultimate goal is to expand to more cities.
HMHY once prided itself on being able to deliver foods that matched residents’ requests, whether the preferences were based on cultural or health reasons. For instance, certain residents request tortillas as their carb of choice rather than the regularly issued white bread, or they might ask for almond milk due to lactose intolerance.
The nonprofit is no longer able to accommodate these needs, and they won’t be able to reintroduce the full service without grants or donations due to decreased funding, according to Fallon.
“Sometimes we’re limited to what we have because we can’t always go out and buy the foods that are in high demand,” Fallon said. “We rely on the resources we have to buy food. We get food from the USDA […] The purpose of the funding is to help purchase those foods that are often requested.”
Help Me Help You accepts online donations and referrals for clients who are in need. They are also actively accepting volunteers to help deliver groceries. The nonprofit is located inside the Multi-Service Center at 1301 W 12th St. operating Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
