For months, a group of elderly New Yorkers eagerly anticipated the 100th birthday party of one of their friends at a senior center in Southeast Queens in January.
But the monumental celebration at the Alpha Phi Alpha Senior Citizens Center in Cambria Heights never happened because a city-contracted transportation provider suddenly stopped running days before Christmas.
“Because there were no rides she couldn’t get there,” said her 84-year-old friend Rosemary Whaley. “We were looking forward to seeing her.”
The provider, Cathay Express Transportation, told senior centers in the area that it could only make trips to medical appointments, grocery stores and group events — not rides to senior centers — due to the city’s Department for the Aging budgetary constraints.
Cathay’s $1.4 million contract with DFTA was supposed to be part of an effort to “place emphasis on transportation deserts, as well as areas with large concentrations of lower income and underserved older adults,” according to a February 2023 solicitation from the city agency.
But by the end of last year, Cathay and affiliate Medlife Ambulette had begun reaching out to senior centers to announce the halt in services because they had prematurely run out of money allocated for those trips.
“Despite our meticulous planning to ensure adequate funding throughout the year, we have unfortunately reached the end of our budget,” representatives of Medlife Ambulette wrote in an email obtained by THE CITY.
The budget shortfall has left approximately 100 seniors and at least 10 senior centers in Southeast Queens scrambling to find their own transportation, according to LiveOn NY, an umbrella group for senior center providers across the state.
The funding fissure comes after former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, in 2021 revamped how the city works with providers who operate some 300 older adult centers across New York City.
Under that initiative, which was partly a response to membership dipping and facilities closing during the pandemic, senior center operators were required to boost programming, increase transportation options for areas with minimal public transit and market their services “to attract under-represented groups and more members and participants overall.”
Critics of the plan cautioned that the city was pushing a complicated process without setting aside enough money to cover all the needs.
Only centers in Southeast Queens have been affected thus far, but some are worried other transportation providers may face similar budget shortfalls and soon stop service.
“We’re always concerned about that,” said Allison Nickerson, executive director of LiveOn NY. “If the need outweighs the resources, then there’s going to be a waitlist.”
Confusing Contracts
Part of the problem is that the DFTA last year quietly changed what it covers under its broader three-year senior transportation contract with providers, records show.
The department for years allowed nonprofit organizations to use the contract to cover the cost of bringing seniors to and from centers each day.
Meanwhile, the DFTA “Transportation Program” solicitation — also from early 2023 — explicitly restricted those sorts of trips, records show.
“A recurring ride, such as a daily trip to an Older Adult Center, is not the intent of this program,” a Q&A attached to that Request for Proposals said.
Nickerson, who advocates for the senior centers, said she understood the change even though it made commuting to the facilities more difficult for some.
“I think it’s a departure generally, but I don’t think it’s the wrong departure. I think there needs to be complementary programs,” she said. “There should be additional strategies to allow people to get people to community programs, particularly in transit deserts.”
Alpha Phi Alpha’s executive director Melissa Marcus, for one, told THE CITY she had been unaware of these changes from DFTA until just before the holidays last year, when Cathay unexpectedly called to inform that it would have to reduce the number of people it could take to the senior center.
Cathay even requested that the center’s members pay for the transportation fees accrued over the months prior, according to Marcus. Then Cathay canceled those services altogether about a month later.
“I was told after the whole thing happened that they were not supposed to be doing center-to-center trips. No one ever said that to us,” Marcus told THE CITY. “DFTA was taking a lead on this. Some communication should have been going on.”
It had never been an issue with a previous provider contracted by the city agency, said Marcus, who added that she wished DFTA would have provided alternate services to fill the transportation gap.
“I don’t know when the center-to-center stopped. That’s the main thing, because if the other service was doing it, why isn’t this service?” Marcus said. “Coming back and forth to the center is probably the biggest thing we need to get the members here so that they can get the services.”
Neither Cathay nor Medlife responded to THE CITY’s request for comments.
Meanwhile, DFTA spokesperson Greg Rose denied transportation was still an issue for seniors in Southeast Queens.
Cathay Express told the department that the amount of units they were allotted was quickly running out, he said.
“The transportation program, which offers older adults with transportation services to essential medical appointments and important errands, like grocery shopping and trips to the pharmacy, in July 2023, expanded the number of transportation contractors across the city, including two providers for the borough of Queens and a citywide transportation contractor,” said Aging Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez in a statement. “Within two days of learning about a possible oversubscription issue with the provider in Southeast Queens, the matter was resolved and residents have since continued to access this important service.”
The DFTA did not respond to follow-up questions noting that several seniors and centers in Queens still say they aren’t getting transportation services.
In Cambria Heights, Whaley now relies on a neighbor to drive her each day to the Alpha Phi Alpha Senior Citizens Center.
The retired community organizer said she could also take a bus or use Access-A-Ride but described those options as less reliable and more time-consuming.
“I’d have to take two buses,” she said. “And it’s too cold. We have to wait outside. It would take an hour at least.”
By contrast, the car ride is about 10 minutes.
And she’s worried about some of her friends who have stopped showing up.
“All of a sudden, they don’t have this privilege of coming and socializing and they just have to sit home or do whatever, which isn’t good,” she said. “Because as we get older, we need to communicate with people.”
Councilmember Nantasha Williams (D-Queens) said she reached out to DFTA officials after the transportation service cancellation first came to her attention around Christmas.
City officials assured her the matter had been resolved, said Williams, who represents the area where the Alpha Phi Alpha senior center is located.
“The last thing I heard from the administration was that they were fixing it and it was fixed,” she told THE CITY. “But now I’m hearing it’s not. Definitely following up is in order.”
Williams and some of her colleagues have earmarked capital funds for the center to buy a vehicle of its own to handle transportation, she added, noting that money has not yet been distributed.
A Lifeline Lost
The transportation issue comes as attendance at older adult centers slowly creeps back up since the pandemic.
Average daily attendance at the centers has gone from 18,967 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2022 to 24,261 in the last fiscal year, according to the most recent Mayor’s Management Report.
DFTA projects that figure will increase to 26,342 next fiscal year, the report said.
For some seniors in the area the centers are a lifeline, advocates said.
Some save half of their lunches and bring the rest home for later, said Donna Atmore-Dolly, Executive Director of Allen AME Senior Centers, whose affiliate centers have been impacted by the adjusted contracts.
“Those are the ones that concern us,” she said, noting that added funding from the city under the latest contract allowed them to also serve breakfast.
“If they aren’t able to get into the center we can’t feed them,” she added. “What are they eating?”