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.
Thank god I live in Park Slope, where there are so many good grocery store options…
1. Key food on 7th
2. Key Food on 5th
3. C Town on 5th
4. Union Market (2 of them)
5. Associated on 5th
And people wonder why people like Park Slope. I can be to 3 grocery stores within 5 minutes of my house.
9:47-Even with a CSA, one can’t get all their food needs met in the north east beacuse veggies aren’t available year around locally. And poor people not having any grocery options other than delis and liquor stores isn’t a new york phenomenon, it’s a national social justice issue.
Access to healthy food is a right. Access to gourmet cheese and artisan bread, not so much.
10:23: I would bet a million bucks that YOU don’t do that.
10:23, it may come as a surprise to you, but if you only have time to shop once a week, and you have any size family, hopping on the subway or the bus is not all that easy.
It’s one thing to tote a bag or two from Trader Joes for your personal food cache, but most families need to at least be able to wheel a cart to a nearby supermarket.
This applies no matter the income level.
I could afford my neighborhood BECAUSE it doesn’t have these things…
I don’t want to move… so I don’t want these things!
There’s no supermarket shortage… there’s a bunch of people out there who moved to cheaper neighborhoods that had less amenities, and now they’re upset that their hoods have no amenities.
Have you ever heard the whiners who moved to DUMBO and now complain that they don’t have amenities. That’s why you could afford the place, dummy! If you wanted manhattan you should have moved there.
Its called a subway 10:18. Get on, ride 1 stop, get groceries, go home.
I heard they have a thing now called a bus too, that might help.
Sometimes the cruelty and stupidity on this forum is incredible:
“a supermarket within walking distance is not a god given right. sense of entitlement much” and “for all you newbies to nyc there has always been a shortage of supermarkets especially in the poor areas
oh the horror she has to drive to a supermarket. too bad so do i asswad”
Why does an article noting the lack of a very important amenity for almost everyone in the city – the accessibility of a grocery store – bring out idiotic comments like those two? Are you trying to prove you’re more NYC than everyone because somehow you are inured to the difficulty of getting the grocery store? How perfect you must be.
Many, many people live in this city without cars. Especially the elderly, the young, the poor. And 9:30, I seriously doubt that the first few posters on this thread are entitled brownstone owners. They’re just folks who can’t wait for the name-calling to begin on any thread. A lack of supermarkets is something everyone should be concerned about.
Eh. Let them eat Mickey D’s.