Meal services stepped in to provide food for them and now the government is contributing as well.

The Ohio Department of Aging is giving 6 million dollars to agencies providing meals to the elderly. 422 thousand of those dollars will be divided between Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana and Ashtabula counties.

Nearly 3,000 are people currently being served with hundreds more on waiting lists.

Officials say the money is not enough.

“There are great needs in this area and we need to help our, our most vulnerable seniors,” said Joseph Rossi, Chief Executive Officer for the Direction Home of Eastern Ohio.

He tells 21 News that the money will only be enough to sustain those already a part of the program, through the end of the year. That means those who are on wait lists, could be waiting until 2022.

“We’ll probably have to keep the waiting list for the time being, unfortunately,” said Ken Bielecki, Executive Director for Jewish Family Services. “What, what the funding will do is just keep our current amount of people that we’re serving on with us until the end of this year,” he said.”