Neighborhoods with mostly minority populations in Washington, D.C. suffer from a lack of quality grocery stores. A large group of neighborhood activists are trying to do something about it.
Sam Norton and Dave Johnson report from a "Grocery Walk" in Washington, D.C. last weekend, staged by a coalition of activists to focus on "the 'grocery store gap' between relatively affluent and predominantly white parts of the city like Ward 3 and lower-income, heavily racial minority areas like Wards 7 and 8."
"The former has nine full-service grocery stores, while the latter two–with their combined population of nearly 150,000 people–have just three full-service grocery stores between them," report Norton and Johnson.
The article spotlights a few of the biggest themes that emerged from the Grocery Walk, including points about the quality of grocery stores (not just quantity) and a history of difficulty in locating grocery stores east of the Anacostia River.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research