Why Grocery Stores Are Avoiding Black Neighborhoods

In the midst of a global pandemic and furious protests against police brutality, there is another silent crisis that is wreaking havoc on America's most vulnerable communities. Food deserts, I think it's a huge disservice, like food deserts are killing us. If you go to the white neighborhood, they have markets here. Access to the healthy food market is an issue of racial and health equity. The USDA defines a food desert as an area where at least one-third of the population lives more than a mile away from a supermarket in urban areas or more than 10 miles away in rural areas.

It is usually located in an area with higher levels of poverty where residents have limited access to healthy, affordable food and many of these families also do not own a vehicle, so it can be difficult to regularly get to a good

grocery

store. stocked and with full service. very difficult by these metrics, about 19 million people in the United States live in a food desert and research from Johns Hopkins shows that food deserts disproportionately affect people of color. Food deserts can be detrimental to the health of their residents. I grew up living in a food desert in Baltimore, there.

There were absolutely no

grocery

stores

, pharmacies or retail

stores

within miles of the area where I lived, we ate processed foods or bought junk food at the nearest corner store and well, with the combination of poor diet and other factors , people in my home had chronic illnesses. diseases and one even died prematurely because of it. The term food deserts became popular in public policy around 2010, when Michelle Obama presented the let's move campaign with the goal of eliminating food deserts in seven years, so why is it Find some of the biggest names in the US grocery industry?

Retail companies refuse to set up shop in communities where there is not only dire need but also a huge consumer base. It is difficult to determine exactly when and how food deserts developed, but most scholars agree that their origins date back to the 1960s after the world war. ii An increase in automobile production coupled with a housing shortage led to new development in the suburbs In 1956, Congress passed the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act and the Interstate system was expanded by 41,000 miles nationwide. During that time, the number of supermarkets doubled from 14,000 in 1950 to 33,000 in 1960. In his book The Color of Law, author Richard Rothstein explains how discriminatory housing practices dating back to the 1930s paved the path to a phenomenon called white flight, where middle-class white families moved to the suburbs.

In many areas, many businesses, including grocery stores, followed suit, while African Americans and other people of color were often left behind in underserved communities. There was a rise in poverty in urban areas in the 1980s, with many industrial jobs leaving urban areas for rural areas and also abroad, so these demographic changes led to extremely socially disadvantaged urban areas. geographically concentrated and in those areas of social disadvantage extremely geographically concentrated investments are very scarce, since you know that both the public and private sectors according to the United States Department of Agriculture there were more than Between 2000 and 2006 there were 6,500 food deserts in the US and more than 60 of them were located in urban areas, despite decades of awareness about the disparity in Americans' access to food, the problem still persists today, fueled by economic segregation and residential, so why have grocery stores? large and small were both reluctant to invest in these underserved communities, there are higher costs to open a business in areas without many existing investments, in those communities it is more difficult to obtain loans and there are higher insurance rates and, furthermore, even if you have Taking into account the average income of a neighborhood, it is more difficult to obtain loans for businesses that open in predominantly African American

neighborhoods

and then try to get large commercial developers to invest in underserved communities, that is even more difficult, the barrier to entry for small businesses in Predominantly Black

neighborhoods

aren't always an easy solution.

Experts tell CNBC that economic development policies tend to focus not on areas with the greatest need but on areas with the greatest potential for growth. The American grocery industry is an approximately $700 billion business with over 41,000 supermarkets and grocery stores in the United States as of 2020. Walmart is a food retail giant. The company has more than 4,500 stores in the United States and more than half of its sales come from groceries. $190 billion in 2019 alone. First Lady Michelle Obama is helping millions of Americans live healthier lives. and Walmart is proud to partner with her in this effort. In 2011, the company announced it would open between 275 and 300 new stores in urban and rural food deserts serving 800,000 people by the end of 2016.

Walmart actually surpassed that quota by opening a total of 442 stores over a five-year period, However, during that same period, Walmart also closed some of its US locations in low-income neighborhoods in 2016, Walmart announced its plan to close 154 US locations, and according to a Washington Post report, These closings Of the 150 foreclosures, low-income areas were disproportionately affected. 121 of the stores were in neighborhoods where the median household income fell below the national average of 54,000. Walmart refused to comment on the item they removed from Walmart and there was no warning or option, you know? like if you're going to take something away, why not replace it with something else, like if the city knows they're going to take away Walmart, why not bring a farmers market to the neighborhood and have the farmers market there, you know, all the summer days for two hours or be more consistent with the options that are here something could have been done by the city as well as by the large corporations that are coming in and taking away our food options Kroger the largest supermarket chain Of America has also drawn the ire of some customers in 2019, the company had sales of $122 billion, but critics allege those profits came at the expense of serving communities in need.

A flashpoint came in 2017, when Kroger decided to close 41 of its 2,800 stores, Rev. Jesse. Jackson called for a national boycott of Kroger locations claiming these closures targeted minority neighborhoods in a statement given to USA Today at the time Kroger said quote because we operate a business with penny profits, sometimes we have to make decisions. difficult to keep our prices low for all customers at one of its Cincinnati locations, for example, the company stated that of the store's 34 years of operation, more than 20 of them were unprofitable, adding that the companies were projected to stores would lose another 900,000 if they stayed open that year building grocery stores. in low-income neighborhoods also comes with other complications, one of the challenges as public policies shift on both sides of the aisle, as if conservatives want to reduce instant spending, it's deadly for food desert supermarkets, On the other hand, you can see some more liberal cities. doing things like beverage taxes or other use taxes that are really attacks on the poor now, opportunity-wise, there could be up to a thousand supermarkets that the country could accommodate and that could be a multi-million dollar business, um, opening those supermarkets . but honestly, if you look at history, as public policy ignores this problem, it hurts this effort on both sides of the aisle and even under the best of conditions, grocery stores are generally considered cash and debt intensive and only marginally profitable by approximately 10%. at two percent on average, which we find out if a supermarket normally makes one percent of sales as bottom line profit, we are finding that desert food stores lose four percent and therefore there is a gap of five percent and that is the challenge and we use the public private sector. funding to mitigate about half of that gap, while grocery stores remain largely elusive in many of America's food deserts.

Dollar stores have proliferated. Dollar stores tend to target underserved urban communities that lack full-service grocery stores and their footprint is growing on the US dollar tree. and Dollar General have expanded by 50 since 2011 and the two chains have indicated they have plans for 20,000 additional outlets, but the problem with dollar stores is that they rarely offer fresh products, but rather processed products that have a long shelf life, like cookies and canned meats there really aren't any viable food options and it's crazy to me because people who live literally three to five miles away have two grocery stores and they happen to be in a white neighborhood?

Why do they have options and I don't? And just because I don't have the money they have doesn't mean I shouldn't have access to the food they have, so this is a convenience store that's pretty close to my mom's house and it's one of the only options. that we have for food and groceries, they don't have fresh foods, they have a lot of canned and processed things, it's not the best, but it's like everything we have in this community when it comes to having healthy food options. Communities of color and low-income communities have suffered for decades as fresh, affordable food options fled their neighborhoods in areas where grocery stores are scarce.

Fast food grab-and-go stores and convenience stores may be your only access to food, like dollar stores that often stock highly processed foods and rarely offer fresh produce. Research has linked a poor diet to a variety of health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. An analysis by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that these conditions disproportionately affect African Americans, which is why we worry about food. insecurity from a public health perspective for many different reasons, one is that, as we've talked about, it's very common, so right now it's affecting about a quarter of all Americans with higher rates among

black

Hispanic populations. and low income, and it is expensive.

So we're spending about $78 billion to address food insecurity through annual healthcare costs and it's also the case that if you're food insecure, you often give up basic needs because you want to buy food, so Just as people give up things like medications or doctor visits, which are obviously very important for health, communities that have poor access to food also tend to suffer higher mortality rates. A study of Chicago neighborhoods, for example, found that the death rate from diabetes was twice as high for people living in food deserts as it was for people living in food deserts.

Those who had adequate access to grocery stores Covet 19 has exacerbated these health disparities. Conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension are among the top underlying health risks that can turn Covet 19 into a death sentence. Food deserts became a hot topic in American public policy in 2010 when First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let's Move campaign to address childhood obesity by providing healthier foods in schools, ensuring families have access to nutritious foods. and affordable and helping children be more physically active that same year, the Obama administration unveiled a new part of Let's Boost the Healthy Foods Funding Initiative, a multibillion-dollar public and private investment designed to eliminate food deserts in the United States.

United over seven years, with a modest initial investment of about $400 million a year, we will use that money to mobilize hundreds of millions more from the private and nonprofit sectors to bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved communities across the country. Yes you cando it here, we can do it all over the country as part of that campaign. Michelle Obama announced nationwide commitments by major food retailers such as Walmart, Walgreens and Super Value to open or expand 1,500 stores nationwide to help provide healthy, affordable food to millions of people in underserved areas, but in the In practice, critics say the program fell short.

An Associated Press report in 2015 showed that even by their own count, participating grocers had not met the goal of opening or expanding 1,500 stores and food deserts. The Partnership for a Healthier America is a nonprofit organization that was created in conjunction with the Let's Move campaign to help negotiate commitments from partner institutions. According to its 2019 progress report, 848 stores were built or renovated in food deserts by 2016, which was about half of that goal of opening or expanding 1,500 new locations. We contacted Walmart, Walgreens, Kroger and Super Value. Walmart declined to participate, and Kroger has not. We were contacted by unfi, which became highly valued in 2018, did not respond to interview requests.

Walgreens committed to converting 1,000 stores into food oasis stores. We contacted the company to ask how many they had converted and they could not confirm. the number of stores that said we expanded our fresh food offerings, including fruits and vegetables, in hundreds of Walgreens stores located in and around food deserts. The Obama administration also faced scrutiny in 2014 for cutting funding from the fast-track program commonly known as food stamps in In 2019, the Trump administration also proposed cuts to food stamps, but after heavy criticism and a legal challenge, the White House decided to stop this effort. Ironically, decades of research have shown that the relief program is one of the most effective tools the government has against food insecurity.

A recent Yale analysis suggests that allowing more Instant recipients to turn to online grocery delivery could mean options healthier for homes and food deserts; However, the Let's Move campaign was a starting point for the debate over food access in the United States and since then policies have been enacted at the federal, state and local levels to improve poor food environments, many states have achieved progress in improving food access in their own communities, for example, Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Initiative has provided $147 million in public funding and private investment to combat limited store access in underserved urban and rural communities across the world. state.

The initiative created more than 88 supermarkets and other fresh food retailers in Pennsylvania. Other states have launched funding initiatives with the help of federal funds, including New York. Maryland, California, and Michigan, to name a few, between 2011 and 2015, the Healthy Foods Financing Initiative leveraged more than $1 billion in grants, loans, federal tax incentives, and investments from philanthropic and healthcare financial institutions to fund more of 200 fresh food projects, although federally funded initiatives have shown some progress over the years some people are taking matters into their own hands after experiencing food insecurity herself mary

black

ford decided to build a food hall aimed to address food deserts in DC's most underserved communities in District 7 there aren't many places to get all the foods I need to nourish myself, so I found myself crossing town or entering the 8th Street corridor to get these foods, but that was costing me eight to ten dollars per elevator ride or Uber ride one way and I said, Hey, everyone. dealing with this same issue and found out that they were, so I wanted to advocate more and more about how we can get another grocery store or a small market or something like that, but even with the rise of local efforts like these nonprofits .

They say they still need more resources, charity and food banks have a role, but we are facing a problem of tremendous scale and federal food programs are the tool we have to address this program at scale, some experts say that even If a grocery store opens in the community that technically qualifies as a food desert, the eating habits of its residents will not necessarily change. If we go back to the last decade or two, it is often assumed that food deserts exist because I am an economist. So I'm going to use economics to frame how I think about it.

They generally think it is a supply side problem. Where is the grocery store? Why isn't there a grocery store located in this particular neighborhood? But that assumes the answer could also be demand-side factors. In 2016, the USDA released a report suggesting that residents living in food deserts still choose to eat unhealthy foods even when given the opportunity. from shopping at a full-service grocery store due to a variety of factors including household and neighborhood resources, education, and taste preferences. Research from Stanford University estimated that only about 10% of the nutritional gap between rich and poor is due to an adequate supply of healthy foods and that 90% actually has to do with customer demand, but advocates fighting food insecurity in the United States say that equitable access to healthy food options is non-negotiable think for half a second that people voluntarily decide not to eat or not eat healthy is crazy i think people think just because there is a mcdonald's or popeyes in those places believe me i love some popeyes from time to time but i have the option that the fast food or fast delicatessens are appropriate.

It drives me crazy because it's incredibly insensitive. Come and look. I've had grocery stores. I've been to grocery stores. In poor neighborhoods, when fruits and vegetables are brown like me, I absolutely believe we still deserve a choice. Another concern regarding the lawsuit. Some residents are actually against the introduction of supermarkets like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods into their neighborhoods because they tend to lead to gentrification. of that area is a phenomenon in which low-income residents are displaced when the monetary value of the community increases and residents can no longer afford to own or rent properties in 2014, Trader Joes decided to withdraw from development plans in a majority black neighborhood in Northeast Portland.

After residents vehemently protested its opening, the Portland African American Leadership Forum wrote a letter arguing that a Trader Joe's would attract an unoppressed population and further displace black and low-income residents, the median income of the households and counties with Trader Joe's is about $63,000 and $62,000 for counties with Whole Foods, a 2016 study by real estate site Zillow found a strong correlation between the housing market and local grocery stores. Homes grow more quickly in value when they are near a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, the study found that after a Trader Joe's opened in a neighborhood, homes within a mile of the store had appreciated 10 percentage points more than the average rate and homes within a mile of either store were also worth twice as much as the median home value in the rest of the U.S.

Trader Joe's and Whole Foods declined requests to comment for this video. Food insecurity remains a major public policy issue and remains an issue in many underserved areas of the country as demonstrations persist across the United States to protest police brutality at some grocers. and city centers have closed their doors to prevent shops from being looted or vandalized. The simultaneous coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the problem of food insecurity, leaving food deserts even more depleted. Covet 19 has made the problem of food deserts much worse, so in part it has. due to social distancing requirements that can make it difficult to access transportation, but certainly in the early months of the pandemic people were going to stores and having trouble purchasing items because the stores were simply sold out and that's simply due to issues with supply chain and trying to meet the growing demand of people trying to buy things in supermarkets some activists are pushing to change the rhetoric they are rejecting of the term food deserts because it oversimplifies a complex system of racial and economic inequality systemic oppression can play a role in shaping behavior In many cases, some ethnic people may have developed certain taste preferences simply because they are used to eating in poor food environments.

Education also influences. The National Bureau of Economic Research found a strong correlation between a family's educational level and food choices. the jury is still out just because a lot of the studies are too shortsighted in terms of doing this, you know, leaving the food desert and immediately you're not healthy, then there's no effect, that's not how perceptions and behaviors work. It's not just get out of there, then everything's fine, kind of thing, advocates and experts alike say healthy food is a racial and health equity issue and simply putting grocery stores in these communities alone won't solve it. the country's food problems.