What is a food desert?
“Food deserts are defined as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy, affordable food options. The lack of access contributes to a poor diet and can lead to higher levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease.” - United States Department of Agriculture (1)
Plenty has been written on how to solve the problem. For example:
“In order to fix the food desert problem in urban areas in the United States, local communities and organizations have taken steps to combat the problem by creating their own plans and agendas to implement change. Based on an interview with the Director of the Steans Center and an anthropologist, Howard Rosing, most of the efforts that haven been taken are community-driven and are run by local community-based organizations. In general, small-scale community projects that have been implemented in various communities throughout the United States have been designed to operate on small budgets. These programs are usually mission rather than market-driven; they are usually funded by small government grants and donations (Lydersen). In this section, it is important to consider the changes that have taken place, the effectiveness of the changes, and the problems and failures of why these programs have not made significant changes in food desert communities.” (2)
The problem with the “fix” narrative is that one is entering the argument in the middle. It would be a much better exercise to begin at the beginning and understand how a food desert forms. Concentrating on urban food deserts, one reason, among many others, that food deserts exist is that they are the result of government failure -or- more succinctly politicos through the mechanism of government and the associated failure thereof. How so?
Urban renewal, public housing and greenways sound warm and fuzzy as the do-gooder is going to help the less fortunate and make utopias of what is seeming a blighted area. However, the end product is to usurp the rights of the poor in order to displace the poor and their neighborhoods. (3)
Believe it or not, lower income people need a “neighborhood” to reside in that has grocery stores, other retailers and importantly, are a reasonable distance to commute to their job. These lower income neighborhoods are not a blight, rather they are vibrant communities like any other community, albeit at a lower income level.
Moreover, people move into and out of such neighborhoods. New lower income job seekers move into the neighborhood and more successful lower income people move to other neighborhoods. Regardless of mobility in or out, or merely staying put, it is a “neighborhood”.
As a neighborhood people network, know one another, and treat the area as home. Hence interrelationships exist that are valuable relationships. Those relationships are also related to self-policing in that no one wants to live in a crime infested neighborhood. In the main, people including lower income people want peace, tranquility and not to be disturbed.
Enter urban renewal and greenways. The do-gooder and associated ilk view the lower income vibrant neighborhood not as what it is, rather as being blighted. The neighborhood is generally foreign looking to the self-appointed do-gooder who lives in neighborhoods unlike the one they are viewing as “blighted”. Stated alternatively, the neighborhood viewed as blighted necessarily needs to look like the do-gooder's neighborhood.
Yes, in order for the lower income vibrant neighborhood to look like the do-gooders neighborhood some nice urban planning needs to come to bear. Meanwhile, the do-gooders ideal of a utopia for the seeming blighted area is hijacked by politicos as they can show “they are going something” for the poor.
Hence central planning under the guise of urban renewal, public housing and greenways is deployed. The neighborhood is to be bulldozed under and replaced with shiny new public housing with a greenway for all to enjoy. Sounds good huh?
Problem is during the bulldozing/building phase all the occupants are displaced including business owners. Yes, the business owners that provided the grocery stores and retailing. These business owners can’t wait years to reopen and move on to other locations.
The dislocated workers must now find housing that is affordable since their neighborhood is now destroyed. Many find that only rural locations have a price of housing they can afford. However, moving to rural locations cause an additional price for the lower income worker in the form of commuting further to work. An additional price lower income individuals can ill afford.
Note: The same politicos that destroy affordable housing for the poor will turn around and frame "affordable housing" as a hand wringing problem ......when to one degree or another it is a problem of their own making.
Years go by and the utopia of public housing/greenway is ready for use. The new inhabitants of public housing are usually a different group than was dislocated by the central planning. The old group’s interrelationships have ended with other x-inhabitants and they care not the expense of moving yet again. Further, the public housing is not as attractive to the dislocated vs. the rental home or apartment they previously had before being dislocated. (4) (5)
The previous businesses owners, in the main, do not return as they have found other endeavors. New businesses are reluctant to located in public housing areas due to a crime rate that is inherent with warehousing people.
Also, the nice “greenway” that was constructed where a previous low income housing area once stood, it not really for the use of low income people. Huh? Oh yes, more times than not middle income people use the greenway to jog, bike and walk their dog. Was the greenway an altruistic endeavor for the value of the poor or merely an additional value for the middle class? (6)
Notes:
(1) https://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/foodDeserts.aspx
(2) https://lshkurti.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/research-project-rough-draft/
(3) The Tyranny of Experts, William Easterly, 2013, Basic Books
(4) Ibid
(5) The Other Path, Hernando DeSoto, 1989, Basic Books
(6) Aaron Director, directors law
http://www.examiner.com/article/directors-law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director%27s_law
“Not surprisingly the #1 spot on the list went to the wealthy golf mecca of Pinehurst. Fact is: poor people don't live in Pinehurst and the working class commutes to jobs there. In that way Pinehurst is able to export most of its crime to nearby Carthage, Southern Pines and other Moore County communities just as has always been done there. Greensboro's elites would no doubt love to use the same approach to fighting crime by pricing the working class out of the city just as Pinehurst has managed to do.” - Billy Jones, Another List, Another Failure For Greensboro
http://greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com/2014/12/another-list-another-failure-for.html
At first blush the above paragraph seems like an opinion. However, the above paragraph is in fact based in real phenomena discussed at length by Hernando De Soto in his book The Other Path and William Easterly in his book The Tyranny of Experts. How so? (1) (2)
Central planners, via special interests, through the hijacking of do-gooder’s initial ideas of helping the poor, propose urban renewal plans and greenways. The urban renewal plans destroy low-income housing and low-income serving businesses.
Generally the result is displaced low-income families that must live elsewhere while the urban renewal takes place. Live elsewhere, in that, they must search for other low-income housing that meets their housing budget. These other locales that have acceptable housing prices are generally in more rural areas meaning the added price of a long commute to work, back to their urban based job, by people of very modest means and modest budget. Those that do return to the area are forced to live in a densely populated low-income housing projects with many rules and regulations. Rules and regulations that generally disallow running small cottage-based businesses from one‘s home.
Meanwhile, in the main, the displaced business do not return. The business owners, without revenue during the period the urban renewal takes place, must either relocate their business or seek other employment. With the end result being a densely populated low-income housing project with few if any businesses to serve the population in this newly constructed densely populated housing project.
Greenways serve the same function as urban renewal albeit no housing of any sort is now available for any income strata. The concept of “greenways” is a do-gooder idea that a green strip of land surrounding or adjoining an urban area makes for an aesthetically pleasing, environmental friendly and family recreation area. Greenways are then notionally presented as ways to “attract businesses and people” as the greenway’s aesthetically pleasing, environmental friendly and family recreation area are aspects that supposedly “attract”.
Problem is, the greenway is not constructed through class A real-estate that exhibits high value. Rather the greenway is constructed, much of the time, right through the same low-income housing and low-income serving businesses discussed above. Two avenues, same result.
When examining the result of such intentions as urban renewal and greenways one must examine the seen and the unseen. The seen is busy construction workers plowing under existing structures that once provided low-income housing and businesses serving lower-income people and building anew low-income housing. With greenways dismantlers removing existing low-income housing and replacing it with trees and lawns. The unseen is the families displaced and having to search for low-income housing in other locales. That these same families must now commute to their employment from much greater distances. Further, the social fabric of the low-income neighborhood is destroyed as families that once networked together end up in separate new low-income locales that offer affordable housing. It’s tough to borrow a cup of sugar from your old neighbor who now lives twenty miles away.
De Soto makes a grand point regarding shanty-towns in emerging economies which are akin to low-income housing in developed economies. The shanty-towns emerge as very low-income rural people are attracted to the higher paying urban jobs available. They must have a place to live during the transition and hence the emergence of shanty-towns. These shanty-towns, as De Soto observes, have their own vibrant economies albeit more informal economies (non-regulated, non-taxed). That the vibrant economy of shanty-town then interacts with the established economy of the urban area it adjoins causing the economic pie to grow. That the inhabitants of shanty-town are by no means permanent inhabitants. These low-income wage earners seek to move up the economic ladder and many, many do so and move to other areas with new shanty-town inhabitants replacing them.
The interaction De Soto describes is very much related to the concept of a “whole economy”. That is, all participants, low, middle and high income within an economy interact to create a dynamic and innovative economy. The problem of slack growth can be to one degree or another attributed to economies that wall-off income groups or drive off income groups.
Now comes the insidious. Urban renewal and greenways are generally built via other people (politicos), spending other people’s money (taxpayer funds), on other people (recipient class). The result thereof, for example, is that greenways are argued to be nothing more than an exercise in Director’s Law where the middle class lobby for a convenient park for themselves to have low cost recreational opportunities at the expense of the lower-income driven out. (3)
Regarding urban renewal the insidious many times comes in the form of aesthetics. Political elites and their ilk find lower income housing an “eye sore”, a “blighted area“ or some other derogatory description. Rather than understanding the economic value of shanty-town and the needs of the inhabitants…. the shape, look, smell of shanty-town is not to their liking. Why not designate the “eye sore” for urban renewal and then the aesthetics of the few will be satisfied?
A final item that is worthy of discussion is the rights of the poor and the private property rights of those serving the poor. Should not the poor have the right to live where they choose? Should the poor be driven out merely because they are poor? Should the poor have the opportunity to climb the economic ladder at the most reasonable price? Are those catering to the poor, be it housing or businesses, do they not have a right to supply to the poor what others are unwilling to supply?
Notes:
(1) The Other Path , Hernando De Soto
http://www.amazon.com/Other-Path-Hernando-Soto/dp/0465016103/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419169693&sr=1-1&keywords=the+other+path+de+soto
(2) The Tyranny of Experts, William Easterly
http://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Experts-Economists-Dictators-Forgotten/dp/0465031250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419169787&sr=1-1&keywords=the+tyranny+of+experts+economists+dictators+and+the+forgotten+rights+of+the+poor
(3) Director’s Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director's_law
