Gotham's Supermarket Shortage: A Public Health Crisis?
The city’s recent building boom has had at least one noticeable deleterious effect on a cross-section of New Yorkers, but especially poorer ones: It’s played a large role in supermarkets closing as owners sell out developers, according to an article published a few weeks ago in the Washington Post. (The story zooms in on a…
The city’s recent building boom has had at least one noticeable deleterious effect on a cross-section of New Yorkers, but especially poorer ones: It’s played a large role in supermarkets closing as owners sell out developers, according to an article published a few weeks ago in the Washington Post. (The story zooms in on a Fort Greene woman who now has to drive in order to get to a supermarket after her local mart was sold off to a developer.) There are now one-third fewer supermarkets in the five boroughs than there were six years ago, says retail consulting company F&D Reports. The Bloomberg administration thinks fewer people having access to fresh produce is a public health crisis, and it’s pushing legislation like the Green Cart law to get more fruit-and-vegetable stands into low-income neighborhoods. There’s also a statewide supermarket commission in the works that will try to come up with new ways to lure groceries to underserved communities. A similar strategy has apparently already been tried in Philadelphia, where a nonprofit organization called Food Trust helped attract 32 new supermarkets. The supermarket shortage, of course, also affects residents of new luxury condos. “How are you going to have million-dollar condos if there’s no place to buy bok choy?” Alicia Glen, the managing director of the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group.
Groceries Grow Elusive For Many in New York City [Washington Post]
Yes, We Have No Bananas: More Fruit Stands for Brooklyn [Brownstoner]
Photo by janelbot.
“I am so sick of listening to Ingersoll/Whitman residents complain about the lack of a supermarket.
There is a fine market on the corner of Myrtle and Carlton. It is ON THE PROPERTY. There is also a medium sized bodgea across from the park.”
Do you shop at either location? If so, please tell me about the quality, abundance and price of food and sundries. Seriously, I’m interested. Have you found yourself in the position of having to buy laundry detergent, tampons, or over the counter medication at a bodega or small market, assuming the market even carries sundries and not just food? How about the fresh vegetables – iceberg lettuce, pink tomatoes, broccoli or cabbage for 3 or 4 bucks a bunch or head? Personally, I’d rather use that money to ride the subway or bus for a week. And then let’s talk about competition affecting price and quality at these perfectly acceptable markets.
“If someone is disabled, there are dozens of organizations that can help (i.e. meals on wheels). Everyone else can walk a few extra blocks.”
Have you worked for Meals on Wheels? If so, than you understand that you must be over sixty years of age with a chronic or debilitating health problem to qualify. And even then, you’re going to receive powdered milk, canned chicken, and generic tuna helper most likely, or a ham sandwich and container of chicken noodle soup if you’re lucky. Meals on Wheels provides a necessary service, but its subsistence living, the quality of the food isn’t likely to do anything to improve your health or spirits, and, as you know if you’ve volunteered with them, it’s a service primarily for the elderly. The average age of most clients is over 80. So, if you’re forty-five, making too much for public assistance but not enough to comfortably cover your rent and whatever price you have to pay at your one local market five blocks away, and you have children and a you happen to break your leg too bad – you’ll just have to wait until you’re old and sick enough to qualify for Meals on Wheels.
Your logic seems to be that if you find yourself disabled and on a low or fixed income, you should simply accept whatever scraps are available to you, walk greater distances, and accept worse quality and/or supply and less competition in the area which, as you know, means higher prices. That’s not logic at all. That’s just classism at it’s worst. It’s an extraordinarily cynical and cold view, in my opinion. Not to mention pretty entitled, truthfully, the very thing your post pretty scathingly indicts the residents of the “PJs” for rather soundly.
3:47 you need to seriously get some.
Yeah, but since those Chinese live out in Bensonhurst, they’re beneath contempt. Almost as bad as Queens.
Reading the comments is better than sex (well almost). As a group you are truly comical.
BTW, the vast majority of people who need to buy bok choy are not so-called “yuppies.”
They are–duh–Chinese.
And one more thing:
Damned straight that artisanal cheese and bread are a god-given right.
So is dry-aged, grass-fed beef, an olive bar, great charcuterie, and fresh oysters.
Mmmmmm!
Another example of why Mike Bloomberg is such an excellent mayor. Access to decent supermarkets is obviously important, and it is really scary to learn that the number of stores has plunged so much. There weren’t enough of them to begin with. Bloomie is to be commended for noticing the trend, giving a shit about it, and then actually doing something about it. I’m gonna miss him.
I know many of the above posters are just losers trying to get the flames going, but it’s still kind of remarkable to think somebody wouldn’t sympathize with a little old poor lady having to hike farther to buy food. To youse people: Karma’s a bitch, dudes.
NYC grocery stores are legendarily awful, with the bright and shiny exception of Fairway. (Trader Joe’s kinda sucks, in my view, and Whole Foods is problematic, but they both are a positive addition to a rancid mix). Hence, the arrival of Fresh Direct. But FD is deeply flawed, too–expensive, and an unnecessary flood of cardboard into the waste stream.
I am so sick of listening to Ingersoll/Whitman residents complain about the lack of a supermarket.
There is a fine market on the corner of Myrtle and Carlton. It is ON THE PROPERTY. There is also a medium sized bodgea across from the park.
Just because there isn’t a mega market across the street for a few years (when Gristedies opens) shouldn’t require LaBithca James & Co. to start protest rallies claiming that this is 21st century slavery revisited.
If someone is disabled, there are dozens of organizations that can help (i.e. meals on wheels). Everyone else can walk a few extra blocks.
Basically it just greedy, selfish and stupid thinking. PJ residents need to stop blaming others for their situation and start fixing their own problems.
“If that is so, then why the move by Bloomberg to license more fruit and vegetable carts in lower income areas?”
But according to everyone on here, FT GREENE isn’t low income.
If it is, then why do homes sell for 3 million dollars?
Which incidentally, I don’t think they should. I think Ft. Green is severely overpriced, given the median income of the neighborhood is around 25K a year.