sample: food deserts
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Written in February 2013 for Urban Views Weekly in Richmond, Va.TRANSCRIPT
2/25/13 In Richmond, food accessibility a problem too | Urban Views Weekly: Richmond’s Contemporary Lifestyle Newspaper
urbanviewsweekly.com/2013/02/05/richmond-food-accessibility/ 1/4
By Mechelle Hankerson
The Farm Fresh at the intersection of 25th and Main streets looks like a normal
grocery store. Paper cutouts in the shape of hot air balloons decorate the
windows to advertise for medical research donations. Families, usually with
young children, come in and out with enough bags to suggest they’ve only
bought dinner for the night.
In the parking lot, cars struggle to back out of spaces and negotiate the small
space to exit and enter. Inside, shoppers wait in one of the eight checkout lines
and overflow into the aisles of food. The shoppers put up with it, mostly because
it’s the only viable option unless they want to travel about 10 miles to Kroger
near Laburnum Avenue or about three miles across town to the Kroger on Broad
and Lombardy streets.
The east end of Richmond didn’t always look like this.
Longtime Church Hill resident Mary Thompson can remember when there were
multiple large grocery stores in the area so residents weren’t clamoring for
parking spots, checkout lanes or to get the best pick out of the small selection of
food and produce.
She’s lived in the neighborhood her whole life — 75 years — and can remember
small strips of businesses with ice cream shops, small specialty stores and
servicebased stores, like barbers. By the time the early ’80s came, Thompson
said most of the stores and business strips had vanished from the neighborhood.
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In Richmond, food accessibility a problem tooPosted by Urban Views Weekly on February 5, 2013 in Health · 0 Comments
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2/25/13 In Richmond, food accessibility a problem too | Urban Views Weekly: Richmond’s Contemporary Lifestyle Newspaper
urbanviewsweekly.com/2013/02/05/richmond-food-accessibility/ 2/4
“Families started moving out of the community and I think that the business
people that were here saw that the demographic was changing and thought
business was in danger,” she said.
As businesses and families moved toward the suburbs, so did the opportunity for
easy access to fullservice grocery stores.
Neighborhoods like Church Hill aren’t a new phenomenon in the United States.
In rural and urban areas throughout the country, residents’ accessibility to stores
that can provide their basic food needs is decreasing as businesses move to the
suburbs with the families that regularly use their services and can spend
significant amounts of money on groceries without the use of public assistance
programs.
Areas without immediate and easy access to grocery stores have been named
“food deserts,” by government agencies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) tracks these food deserts through their online food desert locator and
currently has 6,530 deserts documented nationwide.
According to the locator, there are 194 food deserts in Virginia. Richmond is
home to 12 of these deserts.
Most of Richmond’s deserts are on the south side of the city. There is one in the
Barton Heights neighborhood and there are others that border the Fairmount
and Church Hill neighborhoods.
The food desert locator was implemented as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s
“Let’s Move!” health initiative to help track areas with low access to healthy
food. The initiative formed the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI)
Working Group, which officially defined food deserts as “a lowincome census
tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a
supermarket or large grocery store.” To be considered lowincome, the area must
have a poverty rate of 20 percent or more or median family income at or below 80
percent of the area’s median family income. To be considered lowaccess, at
least 500 people or 33 percent of the area’s population must reside more than
one mile from a grocery store. In rural areas, the same number of people must be
at least 10 miles from a grocery store.
For some Church Hill residents, like Church Hill Association president Jon
Ondrak, leaving the Church Hill food desert isn’t difficult.
“People who can afford it and have transportation go somewhere else,” he said.
Ondrak said the residents that can, often go to Carytown or to the West End to
shop for groceries.
Thompson often shops at Kroger on Williamsburg Road, near Laburnum
Avenue, but knows how hard it can be for residents who don’t have reliable
transportation to have easy access to stores. She often drives her neighbor to the
store so she doesn’t have to take a bus.
Thompson lives on the 1100 block of 22nd Street and the closest grocery store to
her is the Farm Fresh at 25th and Main streets.
“It’s walkable, but at my age, I wouldn’t walk,” she said. “I would have to catch
public transportation and then it doesn’t run directly (to the store). I’d have to get
off the bus and then walk down the hill to the grocery store.”
Even when stores like the Farm Fresh are relatively accessible, both Ondrak and
Thompson agree that the stores’ selections are subpar. For Ondrak, he said he
thinks the store provides the bare minimum to cater to the neighborhood’s
population that relies on food stamps or the WIC program.
“I will go out of my way to not shop at (Farm Fresh) … they’re catering
specifically to that subpopulation that is on public assistance,” Ondrak said.
“Their fresh produce is not anything close to standard.” Ondrak said most of the
products at the store are WICapproved and there is little selection beyond those
items.
The issue of the East End’s food desert runs deeper than just food accessibility
and quality. For residents like Thompson, getting another grocery store means
economic revival for a neighborhood that she said used to be one of the
economic leaders in the city.
Megan Gough, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at
Virginia Commonwealth University works with students to develop
2/25/13 In Richmond, food accessibility a problem too | Urban Views Weekly: Richmond’s Contemporary Lifestyle Newspaper
urbanviewsweekly.com/2013/02/05/richmond-food-accessibility/ 3/4
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neighborhood plans for communities in Richmond. Recently, she and her
students have focused on the eastern side of the city, around the Church Hill and
Fairmount neighborhoods.
Gough said most big grocers tend to avoid neighborhoods like Church Hill and
Fairmount because of the potential economic risk — something she said is
perpetuated by the small number of already established businesses in the area.
“It becomes kind of a vicious cycle … for communities,” she said. “They aren’t
able to attract more people (and) more populations to their communities,
especially populations that are going to bring a different type of income to it …
from a city’s perspective, it’s quite a threat especially if you’re trying to create a
thriving central business district.”
City councilwoman for the 7thDistrict, Cynthia Newbille has been working to try
to lobby companies to bring other grocery stores to the Fairmount and Church
Hill neighborhoods. She has talked to Kroger, Ukrop’s and Giant. Ondrak
participated in the planning process through the East End Charette, a gathering
of citizens and community organizers who discuss and plan strategies for
neighborhood improvement. He said Newbille’s negotiations have come down to
talks with WalMart and, for the most part, have been stalled.
Thompson, who also participated in the Charette and follows Newbille’s
progress, said she will keep offering rides to her neighbor and continue to
support Newbille’s cause no matter how long it might take.
“It’s really hard on these people,” she said. “That’s why I’m just working so hard
in the community to see if we can get another grocery store for the people.”
Tags: church hill, downtown, east end, farm fresh, grocery stores, kroger, urbanareas, USDA
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