I read recently that, according the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approximately twenty-nine
million Americans live in urban and rural food deserts.
That definition means that Lexington
residents from low-income neighborhoods have to travel a mile or more
to a grocery store. With poverty levels being demonstrated to be
growing in suburbs across the country, it could only be a short time
until those food deserts become extremely evident here. From what I
hear, our planning staff believes that it has already started.
It has long been known that the near
north side of Lexington has been home to an almost ever present
community of working class poor. There are pockets of more well to
do neighborhoods but they are the exception. Many streets which once
saw the fine houses of our city's doctors and lawyers or other
entrepreneurs are now home to the apartment dwelling, lower class.
Our ever mobile elite moved on to the newer subdivisions, chasing
that American dream of living “in the country”or acting like it.
Today it is the pockets of poverty
which seem to be growing in our cul-de-sac patchwork of subdivisions
that we have developed over the last half century or more. Many of
them began as “starter homes” under HUD's “236” or “238”
programs and actually did allow young families to enter the housing
market and become upwardly mobile. Lately, the newer, non programed,
version of starter houses appear to be financial traps for new home
owners. Their upward mobility is still stuck in the '70s.
Stories abound from some of the better
known low income districts of larger cities, where food banks and
food pantries see more and more of the newly impoverished. There are
more than likely as many right here in Lexington and maybe you know
of one or more. Retelling of stories and raising awareness is not a
solution, changing what brings on or exacerbates the situation is.
I have long stated that “retail
follows the population” and, up until the 1930s and a wide
acceptance of zoning, the food market section of retail led in that
regard. One of the initial retail establishments in any new
residential area was a grocer or butcher. That is why we saw so many
corner markets in neighborhoods and often in converted residences.
A while,
I chronicled the actions of a retail business in a small part of a narrow wedge of Lexington. It
was not complete by any means, but does illustrate what I believe to
be a part of our problem. As I pointed out, Kroger Co entered the
Lexington market with two stores in 1925, going up against a few
local chains like S.A Glass and his 6 or so stores. Kroger had 60
such corner markets in Cincinnati at the time and there was no such
thing as a “super market”
Zoning is usually employed to separate
noxious uses from neighborhood or other community institutions. The
corner grocery, church or barbershop beside a small drug store were
the mainstays of neighborhood life, hardly uses that folks wanted to
get rid of. To many, that was the embodiment of the small town life
they left behind when they moved to town. Sadly, the regimented
nature of zoning does not allow the time tested evolution of human
interaction having replaced it with something I find hard to explain.
Grocery stores of today are required to
fit into a specific “zone” and since those zones will also allow
many more uses, some of them noxious, they need to be sited away from
the residences that they have historically served. This, I believe,
is what has opened the door for food deserts.
One of my favorite scenes from Driving
Miss Daisy is where Daisy Werthan's son has hired a chauffeur
since she had wrecked her car. Ever the independent woman, Daisy
intends to do the weekly shopping alone until she discovers that you
need to arrange a cab well in advance and walking to the store or
using the streetcar have their own problems. Daisy is a well of
widow living in a changing world and yet blind to those changes.
The Driving Miss Daisy
story began in the late '40s when going to the grocery, though a
special trip, did not involve a large amount of logistics. Store
locations at that time were determined by residential units /
population in a mile or two radius and the store management knew
customer's families by name as well as what they bought. The grocery
business in those days was a real service oriented industry, much
unlike today.
A grocery superstore of 85, 000 to
200,000 square feet will require the population of 3 to 5 mile radius
to make it profitable. In subdivisions containing massive numbers of
cul-de-sacs the driving distance could easily be three times that.
When neighborhoods like that begin to fall the poverty line our food
deserts begin to emerge. Factor in the lack of adequate public
transportation and the effect of the food desert grows. It begins to
look like we either failed to plan or planned to fail, but we did it
to ourselves.
Much of my observations and opinions
here have come from growing up in a grocery oriented family. My
father was a well known and respected grocery manager/owner during
the '40s-'70s. Corporate marketing decisions have replaced the
hands-on customer service actions of the old time grocery man and
convinced the buying public that it is in their best interest. It is
no longer about what is best for the customer but what is best for
the corporate bottom line.
In an industry that made more than $600 billion in 2012, the
corporate perception is that low-income people don't spend money
unless they're at a high enough density, then there's a market. Our
easily identified food deserts in the near north side do not approach
that density. The National Campaign for Healthy Food Access at The
Food Trust says supermarkets stay away because urban settings
force them to rethink the shape and size of their stores. I think
that we are seeing that with the Kroger on Euclid, but under duress.
Operating in low-income areas, the employees who tend to live very
nearby are less work-ready and may cost more to train and insure.
On the local front, we have our own group which is active in bringing
better food choices to the low income areas. It will also involve
teaching the residents of these areas how to make the better choices.
Anita Courtney of the Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition
has initiated a program which has seen some success in other
communities. Here it goes by the name The Good Neighbor Store (GNS)
Network. They have realized that small neighborhood stores play an
important role in communities and if stores can enhance their
business model, it’s good for the community, as well as the store’s
bottom line.
Currently there are 2 stores working to become Good Neighbor
Stores, all in the East End of Lexington. They are hoping to have
grand re-openings this fall:
- Sammy’s Market and Deli at 651 Breckinridge Street on the corner
of Breckenridge and Sixth Street
- Pak-N-Save at 503 East Third Street on the corner of Third and
Race
The Pak-N-Save will have a new produce cooler, new flooring and
new exterior paint and a mural is to be painted on the Race Street
side of the store. There are ongoing efforts to engage other inner
city corner stores.
It is not all about teaching the inner city youth and their
parents. Since we are seeing food deserts develop in our suburban
areas also, we need to spread the awareness there. Mrs. Sweeper has
related to me an incident which played out before her and to which
she could not keep herself apart from. I will let her tell the
story,
I came up to the registers and began
to stand in line at the Kroger on Richmond Road. “I had a small
hand basket of goods. I believe it was a Friday that I had to work
and I was picking up a couple of things for the weekend. In front of
me was a black woman dressed conservatively and wearing a beautiful
headscarf in the style that Sephardi women often wear them. (And I
myself have done on more than one occasion.) That was what drew my
attention at first.
Then I noticed she was in distress,
nearly in tears and trying to say something to the cashier. Her
English was very poor, she was clearly a recent immigrant. The
cashier was not really interested in listening to this woman, she was
instead waving a loaf of quality (possibly organic) whole grain
bread. The rest of the woman's cart was filled with fresh vegetables
and fruits, organic dairy products, and other healthy items – things
I buy for my own family on a regular basis.
There was not a single item of junk
food in her cart, not a bit of unhealthy processed food. I was
almost ashamed of how often we cheat on our “healthy” diet
looking at her cart.
The cashier was waving the bread at
her and gestured to the healthy organic dairy products and a few
other good quality products saying, loudly and rudely, “You can't
buy these.”
It took me a few seconds to realize
the problem – the woman was using a SNAP card (the program most of
us know as food stamps). The card would not take the healthy
products. The cashier was telling the woman she would have to pay
for the healthy items out of pocket. Total amount was approximately
$30.
The woman was scrounging around in
her purse at this point, understanding what, if not why. She said
she had no more money. The cashier told her she would take the
things off her ticket.
I said, “No, you won't,” or
something like that. At this point I was angry, suddenly
understanding that this woman's purchase was being rejected because
it wasn't crappy low quality food – you know, the stuff they're
always griping that poor people buy that makes their kids fat? Well,
that stuff is accepted by SNAP. Decent hormone-free chemical-free
items aren't, apparently.
The cashier turned to me and said,
“She will have to put these back.” And I said again, “No, she
won't,” and I reached over with my own credit union debit card and
swiped it through the machine before the cashier could complete the
action of picking up her hand-scanner to remove the items. As I was
putting in my pin number, the cashier said to me in a nasty tone of
voice, “you can't do that,”
By now I was pretty much in a
spitting rage, but I didn't want to make a scene or embarrass the
immigrant woman any further than she very clearly already was, so all
I replied was something like “Yes I can, and I did. Give the woman
her receipt.” At a loss as to what to do about it, the cashier did
as I told her.
She then rang up my few items with
me glaring at her. She didn't speak to me again. That's probably a
good thing, because I am a bit high-strung by nature and it's hard to
say what would have come out of my mouth. It's not the cashier's
fault the system is set up to benefit corporations who make sure
their processed products are on SNAP's accepted product list. I'm
sure plenty of money changes hands to make sure that happens.
I imagine it is also likely that the
SNAP administrators put some sort of cap on product prices to make
sure that quality products don't qualify. After all, apparently, the
poor don't deserve organic, hormone-free, chemical free products.
For some reason, we'd rather pay
higher prices for obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease,
diabetes, and other costs conveniently covered by Medicaid but
entirely preventable through eating healthy food instead of the
processed crap being foisted off on the poor by SNAP.
As I have said, I am the son of a
grocery man. He saw his job as providing the best product for the
best price and doing it as a service to his fellow man. I cannot see
this ever happening in his store.
