On a Tuesday morning in mid-August, Mary Hynes was blasting her air conditioning. Hynes has walking problems, and she said she’s passed out “a couple of times” in the past. The issue went away after having her pacemaker adjusted, but it was enough to make her nervous about leaving her apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. And then New York experienced a particularly hot summer with multiple heat waves, making her even less likely to go outside.
“Thank God for these guys,” she said, referring to the volunteer dropping off her weekly meals. Hynes is one of more than 20,000 New Yorkers 60 and older who receive meal deliveries from Citymeals on Wheels, a nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to fill the gaps in the city’s public meal assistance program for older, homebound New Yorkers. Her experience is an example of how, during heat emergencies, food assistance can provide a lifeline to vulnerable communities. “I didn’t think they were going to do deliveries because of the heat” at one point this summer, she said, “and I would’ve understood.”
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