WESLACO — A small pilot program that provides food to the elderly may be tasked with serving more people next year.
Although the decision may not come until the summer, Executive Director Ruben Villarreal of the Weslaco Housing Authority was confident on Tuesday that the agency’s new Food Pantry could extend beyond Alta Vista Tower to the Sevilla and Centerpoint complexes.
It’s at Alta Vista where the WHA exclusively opened the Food Pantry — an effort in partnership with the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley. The idea was conceived during a conversation between Romeo Cantu of the RGV Food Bank, WHA Chair Rolando Noriega and his wife and Place 3 City Commissioner Olga Noriega, before kicking off on June 23.
“The next thing we knew we were having a succession of meetings, and we finally signed a contract (with the RGV Food Bank) and moved forward,” Villarreal said. “When it was presented, we thought it was a fantastic idea and we jumped on it.”
Villarreal pointed to the WHA’s ability to meet demand, not to mention the positive feedback gained from tenants who’ve taken advantage of the pantry, as an indication that the program could support other developments.
“There are at least a dozen stories … emotional stories,” Villarreal said. “I can’t go into specifics, but some are sad and others are happy-endings. One of the things that really pushed us to do this was the stories we heard about residents at the high-rise, who were deciding between prescription medication and food. Their assistance only covered so much prescription drugs.”
At $500 a month, which includes staff hours, the WHA is able to provide food to about 85 of Alta Vista’s elderly residents, with hopes of expanding to 100 sometime next year. It helps that the RGV Food Bank’s average cost is 11 cents of food per pound.
“We can get quite a bit with that,” Villarreal added, further noting that tenants receive groceries that include nonperishable goods every month. “The initial target was to help 25 residents, but shortly after we started we realized that wasn’t enough. So each month that we had the distribution that number grew, and we’re probably at about 85 residents now.”
There is an application process in order to qualify for the distribution, the aim of which is to get food to new applicants the day of approval.
It’s a venture that Villarreal called the only one of its kind in the Valley, and one he expects to grow sooner rather than later.
“From the get-go we labeled it as a pilot program with the understanding that if it was successful, we would definitely consider moving this into the other two developments that we have,” he said. “At this point, it looks very positive.”
The WHA serves more than 600 residents, 484 of which are in the voucher program; 80 reside at Sevilla, 50 at Centerpoint and about 100 at Alta Vista. The agency’s annual operating expenses exceed $3.2 million, with approximately 60 percent affording housing assistance payments.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently scored the housing authority with 97 and 100 for the HUD Public Housing Assessment System and Section 8 Management Assessment Program, respectively.
