By Allison Desy
While some Washington, D.C. residents have a variety of grocery stores and markets where they can shop close to home, others do not have access to or cannot afford to shop at stores selling fresh produce and other nutrient-dense foods. As a result, food insecurity rates are high in some areas of the city.
Despite being one of the wealthiest cities in the country, nearly 15 percent of Washington, D.C. residents are food insecure, according to the Capital Area Food Bank, the city’s largest organization that aims to fight hunger and its related factors. Food insecurity refers to a lack of consistent access to food, particularly nutrient-dense food, due to a variety of factors including poverty.
D.C. Hunger Solutions (DCHS) is a local organization that works with other community partners to tackle food insecurity and improve health, education and economic security for low-income community members in Washington. According to a 2016 DCHS report about the grocery store gap, 1 in 7 households in the city faces food insecurity. The majority of those are African-American households located east of the Potomac River in Wards 7 and 8.
“Hunger is the result of poverty,” Beverley Wheeler, director of DCHS, said in an interview. “Rich people may not eat well, but if they are hungry, it is by choice because they have the money to be able to buy food. If you are food insecure and you don’t have income, you are at the mercy of others and the elements.”
Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, has been studying income inequality in Washington, D.C. for over 20 years. He said that the city stood out to him as having one of the largest gaps between low-income and high-income residents of any major city in the U.S.
“We have a lot of people with a lot of money in D.C., so the incomes at the top of the income scale of D.C. are particularly high,” Lazere said in an interview. “Meanwhile, at the bottom end, there’s just a lot of D.C. households who are either living on low-wage, part-time jobs and also people living on low fixed incomes.”
Wheeler said that the issue of food insecurity is deeply connected to this high level of income inequality. She said that DCHS spoke with grocers when compiling information for their most recent report and found that grocery chains avoid low-income areas where they don’t think stores will prosper.
“When we talked to the grocers and retailers, they were very honest and they have a marketing plan,” she said. Their marketing plan is to look at education, income level and a couple of other things, and they aren’t coming to the neighborhoods that don’t have the income levels or the education levels that they want.”
Improving food access with local markets
The link between income inequality and food insecurity in the nation’s capital is a clear one. There are just four full-service grocery stores in Wards 7 and 8 combined, according to recent local D.C. government data. The DCHS grocery gap report also found that both wards had a median household income of less than $40,000 in 2014. In Ward 3, where the median household income is over $100,000, there are nine full-service grocery stores.
Lazere pointed to the increase in high-end housing, restaurants and retail in areas such as the H Street corridor as an indication that income inequality is on the rise.
“One of the ways you see that is just the virtual lack of access to fresh produce and grocery stores in the poorest neighborhoods, particularly Wards 7 and 8,” he said.
Tamisha Woodfork is a clerk at Good Food Markets, a full-service grocery store that brings local products, employment opportunities and economic growth to the community of Ward 5. Woodfork has been working at the market for about six months and said she feels it is different than other stores she has worked at in the past.
“I’ve done grocery for a long time, but this store was kind of different for me,” Woodfork said in an interview. “I liked it because it’s smaller, it felt more like a family compared to the big stores.”
Good Food Markets locally sources the majority of its products, with most of the fresh produce and ready-to-eat prepared meals coming from residents of the local community.
“Everything that we get as far as produce comes from the neighborhood, anywhere in the wards who are growing produce,” Woodfork said. “Our beer and wine also come from the neighborhood area. The farthest we go is Baltimore with our beer and wine, but the majority of it is the D.C. area.”
Gwendolyn Crump, a patron of Good Food Markets, has been a resident of the neighborhood for eight years and said she has been coming to the store since it opened in 2015. For Crump, it’s about the convenience of having a market with fresh produce and other products so close to home.
“I like that it has items to complete a meal, like if you’re making something and you realize, ‘Oh, I don’t have tomatoes, or I don’t have spinach,’” Crump said in an interview. “That’s actually why I’m here, because I need to add some stuff to my dinner tonight.”
In Spring 2019, Good Food Markets will open a second location in the Anacostia neighborhood of Ward 8. Ward 8 currently has just one full-service grocery store for nearly 80,000 residents, many of whom are food insecure due to economic factors.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines food deserts as areas, particularly urban and low-income locations, that do not have sufficient access to fresh produce and whole foods, such as milk and grains. Randy Smith, a fellow at the D.C. Policy Center, calculated that 11 percent of Washington, D.C.’s total area is made up of food deserts. More than 80 percent of that area is in Wards 7 and 8.
Woodfork said that she feels hopeful about Good Food Markets entering the Anacostia neighborhood, and thinks it will bring not only nutritious and accessible food to the area, but also a better sense of community.
“I think it’ll do good because they’re not used to this kind of stuff, first of all, over there in that community. But second off, I feel like it would be convenient for a lot of people in that community because there isn’t a lot of grocery stores,” Woodfork said. “I think it will help. Actually, I think it will bring a lot more of a community together because of a store like this, so I really think it will be good.”
Economic sustainability as a means to combat food insecurity
Stores like Good Food Markets are working to engage the community in economic growth while providing nutrient-dense, locally grown food for residents who may struggle with food insecurity.
The University of the District of Columbia’s Urban Food Hubs Initiative also seeks to help feed food desert communities while providing job training. There are currently four Urban Food Hubs at various stages of development in the District, two of which are located in Wards 7 and 8.
Sabine O’Hara, the dean of the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences said that one of the school’s essential missions is to contribute to the economic growth and prosperity of the community.
O’Hara said that the Urban Food Hubs model addresses complex issues, such as producing food in a commercially-viable way for small urban communities and promoting socially conscious food distribution. The program also offers educational opportunities, such as pest-management and gardening workshops and food safety certifications, to members of the community.
“We very intentionally seek to engage the community,” O’Hara said in an interview. But she also said it can sometimes be difficult to get community members involved in training programs when they are busy working. “Some members of the community work three or four jobs to support their family.”
UDC’s Urban Food Hubs grow and sell produce to some local restaurants for profit. O’Hara said that community-based models of food production work well because the profit comes back to the community itself.
“High-revenue models don’t necessarily meet the food insecurity needs of low-income communities,” O’Hara said, noting that the purchasing power of low-income communities is not as strong.
The food system can be used to remedy income disparity in terms of job creation, Wheeler said. She pointed to the importance of training individuals to work in various positions throughout the food system, such as delivery drivers and restaurant servers, as a way to lessen income inequality and, as a result, improve food access.
“D.C. has some magnificent restaurants; we have wonderful opportunities for people to actually work in these systems,” she said. “How do we use the food system to help deal with some of this disparity?”
According to Lazere, although the median house income in Washington has been growing annually for the last decade, the benefits disproportionately affect white households over black households.
“Given that this [income inequality] is part market-driven and is part public-policy driven, I think as a community, if we care about it, it just has to be a priority,” Lazere said. “To figure out how we can make sure that the benefits of a growing economy are shared equally.”
While food insecurity rates are high in Washington, particularly for families east of the river, Wheeler said she remains hopeful about solving the issue.
“This hunger thing is solvable. We’re looking for solutions constantly. It is solvable, we just need to figure it out,” Wheeler said.
Advanced Reporting Times 