It is now a consensus that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) pervade in the center of most (normal) galaxies and co-evolve with their hosts to some extent. But how this co-evolution processes remains elusive, even for some of the best-known SMBHs in the local universe where detailed observations are possible and available. In this talk, I will aim to highlight our current (still limited) understanding of how most local SMBHs are fed at only a low rate and whether the feedback from such starving SMBHs can still have a substantial influence on their environment. I will introduce recent effort by my group toward a better understanding of these long-standing problems, using M31, M81 and other nearby galaxies as the laboratory.
