Posted by Allison Burket | October 24th, 2010
By Kristen Kozlowski and Allison Burket
“Why do we have food deserts?” asked Councilmember Mary Cheh during a public hearing on the FEED DC Act on Monday, October 18th – a bill aiming to improve access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food in DC’s underserved communities.
Introduced last July by Councilmembers Cheh, Tommy Wells, Kwame Brown, and David Catania, the “Food, Environmental, and Economic Development in the District of Columbia Act” has three main purposes: to improve access to healthy food for residents of DC’s food deserts; to support a clean environment and encourage green job growth in DC; and to create jobs for DC residents.
The impetus for this bill comes from multiple directions – the obesity epidemic in DC, economic inequality in the District, and the need for city government revenue. In particular, a recent report from DC Hunger Solutions highlighted the uneven distribution of grocery stores across DC’s neighborhoods - for example, Ward 3 has five times as many full-service grocers per resident as Ward 4. This “grocery gap” disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color, and severely limits many families’ ability to access healthy affordable food. Families are forced to travel long distances or to rely on the cheap highly-processed unhealthy foods in corner stores, a phenomenon that contributes to the city’s obesity epidemic.
Hoping to address these concerns, the FEED DC Act will create a public/private partnership to attract and renovate stores that will sell fresh and healthy foods in underserved communities.
A “Grocery Store Financing Program” of grants, loans and tax credits would be administered by a “grocery ambassador” in the Mayor’s office, accompanied by a “Healthy Corner Store Program” to support and expand the ability of existing corner stores to serve fresher and healthier options. As part of this program, the District would help establish a commercial distribution system for fresh produce and healthy foods to corner stores. This “comprehensive, coordinated effort,” Cheh explained, will not interfere with the existing DC budget; it will largely be “reallocating resources we already have,” aiming to be fiscally and socially responsible.
Why are there food deserts?
Encouraged by Councilmember Cheh, each of the witnesses during Monday’s hearing returned to the question of why food deserts exist in the first place. Alex Ashbrook of DC Hunger Solutions had one answer: grocery stores tend to build in places where they can minimize their risks, which are typically high-income communities where they can be sure that customers have the money to purchase from them. Building on that interpretation, Tanikka Cunningham from Healthy Solutions noted that produce items tend to have low profit margins to begin with: “You aren’t going to turn around and have 100% profit on an apple.”
Most witnesses also highlighted the role of certain stereotypes that inform the perception that building grocery stores in certain neighborhoods would be higher-risk. Food For All contributor and community advocate Carl Rollins pointed to the role of racism and racist policies in forming today’s food deserts, which are primarily found in African-American neighborhoods. These neighborhoods suffered for decades under “redlining” practices in which banks would deny investment to certain areas with high percentage African-American.
Will FEED DC do the job?
So, how well will the FEED DC Act do in reversing these factors? The consensus of the witnesses at Monday’s hearing seemed to be that the bill’s first draft is a great start, but to ensure the programs will genuinely support healthy food access in the communities that need it, many important adjustments and expansions are needed. (Video of the hearing and full testimonies from each of the witnesses can be found here)
In particular, the bill could better target the program’s incentives towards the neighborhoods that stand to benefit the most. Ed Lazere of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and other witnesses recommend using census data to determine eligible low and moderate-income neighborhoods with limited healthy food access, rather than offering subsidies to grocery stores within Public Enterprise Zones (which currently include parts of Chinatown and Columbia Heights). The bill could also do more to guarantee that stores and companies receiving subsidies are equipped to accept SNAP and WIC benefits – currently less than 50 percent of the full-service grocery stores accept WIC benefits.
Furthermore, many witnesses pointed out that there many ways to improve food access and food security beyond brick and mortar stores (a concern raised when the bill was first introduced). Mark McCaffry of Capital Area Food Bank called for a more “comprehensive approach to food access” — one that recognizes and supports the diverse ways communities access healthy foods and work to improve food security. Farmers markets, food co-ops, food trucks, school and community gardens, and other forms of urban agriculture have a key role to play, but would receive no support from the bill as it is written. Many of these initiatives are already underway, but with insufficient support from the DC government, argued Tanikka Cunningham from Healthy Solutions, who emphasized that “in order for anything to have an impact on the community, the community has to have a stake in it.”
Such community-based programs and initiatives also have a key role to play on the “demand side” of the equation. Carl Rollins pointed out that despite the enormous success of the Pennsylvania programs, “I don’t believe that we have hard data on whether or not actual eating patterns have changed and health disparities have alleviated.” He called for a more “robust nutrition education program,” one that recognizes the role of “school gardens, public land for community gardens, and urban agriculture as a mechanism to teach proper nutrition and promote wellness.”
Farmers markets, which offer fresh and healthy foods in communities, also provide an important place for nutrition education and exchanging tips on fresh food preparation. Ward 8 and Georgetown Farmer’s Market Managers and witnesses from the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association each argued that could stand to benefit from both fiscal and regulatory support from legislation like the FEED DC Act and called for a Farmers Market title, which Concilmember Cheh announced would be added to the bill’s final version.
All together, the FEED DC Act makes a strong start towards addressing many of the causes of food deserts. Food deserts in DC do not exist in a vacuum; decades of racist economic practices have left many predominantly African-American neighborhoods in DC without a strong business base or job growth. The lack of healthy foods in these neighborhoods has contributed to a public health crisis that costs the District of Columbia millions of health care dollars every year. A bill that supports expanding healthy food access points while also creating jobs for DC residents, creating revenue for the District, and hopefully leading to a better quality of life for thousands of people, is something to be excited about.
The updated version of the bill was recently released and is expected to include many of the proposed expansions or revisions. One final working group meeting on October 28 will solicit feedback on the final legislation – visit Mary Cheh’s website to learn more or to check for the latest updates. DC Food For All will also be posting more information and perspectives on the FEED DC Act, check back soon!
