New Program Addresses Food Deserts in Detroit

MICHAEL GARRY

DETROIT — This city, with one of the worst “food desert” problems in the U.S., last month launched a new program aimed at bolstering the prospects of struggling independent grocers and bringing new food stores into underserved areas.

Mari Gallagher

The program, called the Green Grocer Project, is being managed by the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC), a private non-profit group focused on revitalizing this hard-pressed city, which has seen a major shift of its population, along with virtually all of its chain food retailers, to the suburbs.

The flight of food retailers has left Detroit with numerous food deserts — low-income neighborhoods where access to affordable, quality and nutritious foods is limited. A 2007 study conducted by Chicago-based food-desert researcher Mari Gallagher found that about 550,000 Detroit residents — more than half the population — live in areas that are “out-of-balance in terms of day-to-day food availability.” This means, she wrote, that “they must travel twice as far or further to reach the closest mainstream grocer as they do to reach the closest fringe food location, such as a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store.”

Gallagher also found evidence that “communities with food imbalance are more likely to experience worse diet-related health outcomes than other communities.”

DEGC received a $500,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to start the Green Grocer Project (originally called the Fresh Food Access Initiative), and expects to get a $500,000 community development block grant allocation from the city of Detroit this summer, said Sarah Fleming, program manager of the Green Grocer Project. The block grant would come from the federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. DEGC ultimately hopes to garner $32 million over the next three years for the project, she said.

The block grant will be used as seed money for the project's loan fund. “We will be a subordinate lender, not a primary lender,” Fleming said. “So when a grocer goes to a traditional lender, we can provide a letter of support saying we have ‘X’ amount of money to back it up.”

The project hired Fleming to serve as a “clearinghouse” for grocers in their daily dealings with city bureaucracy. “I will help them with permits, zoning and other laborious bureaucratic processes,” she said.

Finally, the project will help finance consulting services for grocers to address such areas as workforce training, accounting, customer service and produce handling.

The Green Grocer Project is designed to support some of the 80 independent supermarkets that operate in Detroit so that they don't leave or go out of business, as well as help attract new stores — independent or chain — into the city, said Fleming. Detroit's remaining chain supermarkets include a few Aldi stores, though Meijer is expected to open a new store next year, she said.

In the project's first year, DEGC expects to assist five to seven existing supermarkets; the first to receive aid is Family Fair Food Center in the Lafayette Park area. Over three years, Fleming said, DEGC hopes to help 20 to 25 stores and bring one to three new stores into underserved areas. “We help grocers who are committed to staying in their neighborhoods,” she said.

The Green Grocer Project came about in response to Gallagher's 2007 report, “Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Detroit.” The report sparked the formation of a task force to examine the issue, which included the Associated Food and Petroleum Dealers as well as Spartan Foods and Supervalu, two wholesalers supporting independents in Detroit. DEGC eventually launched the project with direction from James Johnson-Piett, principal of Urbane Development, Philadelphia, and formerly program manager for the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a highly successful food-desert program in Pennsylvania. (See “Success in Pennsylvania Stirs Hope for Food Deserts,” SN, March 15, 2010.)

‘FRINGE’ STORES

In her study of Detroit's food deserts, Gallagher found that retailers in the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that accept “food stamps” (in the form of electronic benefit cards) are primarily “fringe” food locations, such as gas stations, liquor stores, party stores, dollar stores, bakeries, pharmacies and convenience stores. Only 8% of Detroit retailers in the SNAP program are small, medium or large grocery stores or supermarkets, she said.

Most of the 1,100 Detroit retailers in the SNAP program studied by Gallagher were classified as convenience stores. But upon examination, she discovered that 56% of these “convenience stores” were actually party stores, liquor stores, dollar stores, bakeries and other venues. She did not evaluate whether these stores' food assortments met federal requirements for participating in the SNAP program “but we suspect that many do not,” she said in the report.

In an interview last week, Gallagher said the U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional standards for SNAP stores “are too low” and that many retailers “are not following the standards.”

In Michigan, electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards — known as Bridge cards — provide access to both food assistance through the SNAP program and cash assistance, noted Gisgie Davila Gendreau, marketing and public relations director for the Michigan Department of Human Services, Lansing, which administers these programs in the state. There are no limits to purchases on the cash side of the card, so nonfood stores can legitimately accept the card if cash funds are being accessed, she said.

According to Davila Gendreau, the EBT network is set up so that when the card is used to access SNAP funds, payment can be denied if the product is not a food item covered by the program. In addition, the Michigan Department of Human Services has an Office of Inspector General that focuses on card fraud prevention.

But the larger problem is that even legal food stamp purchases may not be enough in food desert communities, said Kami Pothukuchi, associate professor of urban planning, Wayne State University, Detroit. “You can buy a lot of really bad junk food with food stamps,” she said. “But if that's the only thing available in your neighborhood, then food stamps are not providing the healthy food benefit they were intended to provide.”

Another solution being piloted in Detroit is bringing farmers' markets to underserved neighborhoods. The Michigan Department of Human Services partnered with the Fair Food Network last year to bring four farmers' markets and a mobile food truck (called Peaches & Greens) offering Michigan-grown produce to Detroit communities. In an eight-week program called “Mo' Bucks,” shoppers spending up to $10 per week at the markets would receive a matching amount of money toward purchases. The program is expected to be repeated this summer.