{"id":307640,"date":"2025-10-16T08:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/307640\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T08:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:57:14","slug":"government-shutdown-contributes-to-service-suspension-for-some-meals-on-wheels-san-antonio-clients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/307640\/","title":{"rendered":"Government shutdown contributes to service suspension for some Meals on Wheels San Antonio clients"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO<\/strong> \u2013 Meals On Wheels San Antonio currently provides meal service to around 3,600 clients in Bexar, Frio, and Atascosa counties, but that number will drop<\/a> the week of Nov. 3.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s CEO, Vinsen Faris, said 350 Bexar County clients who receive home-delivered meals are going to have their meal suspended indefinitely starting that week. <\/p>\n

He said those being affected by the suspension have already been notified by the nonprofit.<\/p>\n

While working on the budget, Faris said he and his team recognized they would have to immediately move forward without some of its federal dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeginning this October, we would see a significant decrease in our monies coming in and it could be anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 a month,\u201d Faris said. \u201cSo that\u2019s why the decision was made to pull back on services at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faris said this suspension of service is a first.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve never ever had to suspend service that people are already receiving,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a, you know, very serious time, and one that has a lot of uncertainty with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the uncertainty in funding is a residual effect from the government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government shutdown is impacting this because the federal budget has not been passed,\u201d Faris said. \u201cCongress has not passed any of the 12 funding bills yet to fund the federal government for this coming year, so everything could change.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to meal delivery service, Meals on Wheels\u2019 AniMeals, a companion pet food service for clients that need help feeding their pets, is also being suspended.<\/p>\n

KSAT was told the AniMeals suspension would affect 90 of the 350 clients already being impacted.<\/p>\n

Faris said to reinstate meal delivery service to the affected clients for a year, the agency would need to be guaranteed $400,000 to $500,000 dollars. <\/p>\n

Until then, affected clients have been given a list of community resources that may be able to step in.<\/p>\n

When asked about any more possible suspensions or cuts, Faris said Meals on Wheels San Antonio is taking a conservative outlook and will be holding its client number at around 3,300 once this cutback occurs. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are cautiously optimistic that this is going to be the only cut that we have to make,\u201d Faris said. <\/p>\n

He also said despite how things look right now, he is holding onto hope that the suspension will not last long.<\/p>\n

He said the first step toward that will be for the government shutdown to end and Congress can tackle the federal budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce Congress passes this budget, we will have some idea on how much money might be coming to Texas and to Bexar County, but it will be that reassurance that will enable us to hopefully put all of these folks back on service,\u201d Faris said.<\/p>\n

Read also:<\/b><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Meals On Wheels San Antonio currently provides meal service to around 3,600 clients in Bexar,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":307641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,154308,8622,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-307640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-meals-on-wheels-san-antonio","10":"tag-nonprofit","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}