Hialeah City Hall is cutting ties with the nonprofit that has quietly run a senior meal program at Goodlet Park for more than four decades, ordering Little Havana Activities & Nutrition Centers to move out of the city-owned building and triggering a scramble over who will feed some of the neighborhood’s most vulnerable residents.
The mayor’s office recently told the nonprofit it must vacate the Goodlet Park senior center next Wednesday, ending a 43-year arrangement that was never put in writing but has long provided hot lunches and take-home meals to local elders. With the clock ticking, families, caseworkers and staff are racing to make sure there is no break in daily hot meals or weekend frozen packs.
In an April 27 letter, Mayor Bryan Calvo gave Little Havana Activities & Nutrition Centers 30 days to leave and warned that operating under a decades-old verbal understanding creates a “huge liability” for the city. Calvo also said the Goodlet Park facility costs around $700,000 a year to maintain. City officials say the Hialeah Housing Authority will step in to serve lunches for 113 participants while it folds the site into its existing network, which city leaders say already feeds about 1,300 people daily and delivers meals to more than 400 homebound residents. The city has also floated renting out part of the recreation building to offset costs, according to the Miami Herald.
Nonprofit history and services
Little Havana Activities & Nutrition Centers says it has provided senior services across Miami-Dade for more than five decades and lists Goodlet Park among its congregate-meal locations, along with other sites that offer hot meals and activities. The nonprofit runs daily hot-meal programs, home-delivered meals and a high-risk nutrition program that sends frozen meals to seniors who cannot attend in person. Those offerings are laid out on the agency’s website at Little Havana Activities & Nutrition Centers and in a county-funded meal-site roster maintained by Alliance for Aging.
How seniors could be affected
In the program’s final days at Goodlet Park, seniors who rely on the comedor told reporters that attendance usually tops more than 100 people Monday through Thursday and drops on Fridays. The nonprofit said its last distribution of high-risk frozen meals at the site took place on May 13, with supplies expected to last through May 24…