Hisami Oliva

Carli Underhill

Chemistry

12 June 2022

How 90-Year-Old Policy Affects Modern Urban Food Systems

Approximately 25% of San Diego county’s census tracts are considered ‘food deserts’,

meaning a quarter of San Diego neighborhoods are areas where it is difficult to buy affordable or

good-quality, fresh foods. The academic definition of ‘food deserts’ are “low-income tracts in

which a substantial number or proportion of the population has low access to supermarkets or

large grocery stores” (Dutko, Paul, et al., 2012, USDA). Many food justice activists prefer to use

the term ‘food apartheid’ to describe the same phenomena because its definition better denotes

the racialized aspect of food-access inequality; data recorded by the San Diego Hunger Coalition

shows that in 2019, 25% of San Diego’s general population was experiencing food insecurity,

whilst 44% of both Black and Latinx populations and 37% of the Indigenous population of San

Diego were experiencing food insecurity.

Segregated city planning and supermarket redlining have had a big role in manufacturing

metropolitan food apartheid and racial health disparity. This racial disparity in food access is one

of many direct and present-day effects of the economic, policy-enforced suppression of

communities of color through prolific policies like redlining and other segregative housing

policies, which are often myopically overlooked when addressing food insecurity. In a country

where our major agricultural systems have been built directly upon the exploitation of people of

color - i.e. African enslavement on the earliest American plantations, the Bracero Program of the

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1940s, or even migrant workers in American fields today - communities of color are

systematically disadvantaged when it comes to accessing fresh foods and produce.

To address the problem that is food apartheid is not just a question of our food system, but also a

question of how we’ve structurally planned our cities and the infrastructure (or lack thereof)

which exists unequally across the country.

Food justice is a fundamentally intersectional cause that requires food inequality to be

looked at holistically and from every angle, taking into account the centuries of institutionalized

racism which predates and strongly influences food inequity. In trying to combat food-related

systemic oppression through grassroots praxis like community gardens, communities in food

deserts also have to face the challenge of environmental racism and compromised air safety.

What exactly is the connection between redlining and the survival of racial discrimination in our

food system and what do higher levels of air pollution in redlined areas mean for its residents

and local food systems?

Background

In the wake of the Great Depression, the American housing system was on the brink of

collapse. The housing system contributed to the banking crisis and subsequent economic

devastation of the Great Depression, and in 1933, an estimated 1,000 home loans were being

foreclosed a day (Wheelock, David, The Great Depression: An Overview). President Franklin D.

Roosevelt, who served in office from 1933 to 1945, addressed the housing crisis his

administration inherited in the set of economic policies known as the ‘New Deal’, where home

buying became incentivized for working-class Americans through The National Housing Act of

1934. The National Housing Act entailed the allotment of federally backed loans with low and

fixed interest rates that essentially guaranteed mortgages to any loanee, and was a form of

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assistance geared toward working-class white buyers. The federal agency in charge of overseeing

these home-buying loans was the Federal Housing Association (FHA) and the Home Owners’

Loan Corporation (HOLC) who created “Residential Security Maps” of 293 major US cities that

evaluated districts as “Best”, “Still Desirable”, “Definitely Declining”, or “Hazardous”

(University of Richmond, Mapping Inequality) based on architectural integrity and general

locale, but more importantly socioeconomic and racial makeup of neighborhoods, the most

“Hazardous” areas being colored in red. The districts and neighborhoods lined in red were

populated by majority BIPOC or low-income white residents and were characterized as

“Hazardous” because they were populated by ‘undesirable’ ethnic groups and were a risky home

loan prospect. Because these houses were deemed undesirable, homes in redlined areas held little

position as collateral for loans, and lenders would charge mortgage loans at higher interest rates

(Mendez-Carbajo, Diego, 2021, Neighborhood Redlining, Racial Segregation, and

Homeownership).​​The redlined areas considered “Hazardous” neighborhoods where non-white

Americans were forced to were often within the radius of industrial zones, meaning their

exposure to industrial emissions was higher, posing a disparity in air pollution levels in redlined

neighborhoods, aka neighborhoods of color. Just 50,000 of the 2.7 million FHA-insured loans

given out to Americans between 1935 and 1950 went to Black Americans, the majority of which

were given under a military housing program (Commission on Civil Rights, 1959).

Owning property is one of the most assured ways of establishing wealth in America, with

the average net worth of an American homeowner being 40 times that of a renter ( Federal

Reserve, 2020, Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2016 to 2019: Evidence from the Survey

of Consumer Finances Changes), so laws that created inequality within the housing market for

people of color help create the struggle for upward mobility and racial wealth gaps that exist

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today. Homeownership among white Americans in a post-Depression America skyrocketed

directly as a result of the National Housing Act, but homeownership among non-white

Americans stayed pretty stagnant. Today, homeownership among Black Americans is about

44.7%, whereas about 74% of white Americans own homes (US Census Bureau, Apr. 2022).

These redlined areas often lacked basic infrastructures like sewer lines or paved streets, (the

latter still being addressed by council members here in San Diego Council Districts 4, 8, and 9),

but lacked infrastructures like supermarkets and equal education, as well.

It’s important to note that redlining affected the zoning of school districts and thus has had a part

in creating the inequality that exists today within the American public education system, which

itself, (free public education) is a product of Black political leaders during the American

Reconstruction era (Hannah-Jones, Nikole, 2019, 1619 Project). Redlining, along with other

contemporaneous segregative policies, encouraged residential segregation and generations of

racialized neighborhoods and food deserts.

Redlining to Food Deserts & Supermarket Redlining

Redlining birthed not only housing inequality and wealth gaps but also brought about

supermarket redlining, in which major grocery chains will either relocate their stores from

lower-income neighborhoods to suburban areas or brazenly avoid putting stores in lower-income

neighborhoods. This practice of withholding grocery stores from lower-income neighborhoods

manufactures food deserts and penalizes previously segregated areas in accessing food because

of the results of years of systematic neglect that often manifests in higher crime rates within

lower-income areas. The main reason companies will keep a corporate distance from

lower-income and redlined areas is because their perceived profit margins in said areas are

oftentimes lower than if they were to locate and cater to middle to upper-middle-class

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populations. Profit margins of a grocery retailer called ShopRite located in a working-class area

of New York showed an estimated profit margin of about 6.8% in 2022, in contrast to the ~20%

profit margins most Trader Joe’s see yearly. Profit margins of grocery stores in lower-income

areas are oftentimes lower because people living in poverty shop differently than people who are

more financially stable and also because these food deserted areas see higher rates of poverty

and, in turn, higher rates of theft of necessity items; infant formula, contraceptives, and laundry

detergents were some of the most stolen items in 2020 (National Retail Federation, 2020, 2020

Organized Retail Crime Survey). Granted, this incongruity of success is not always the case.

Take for example Whole Foods in Detroit: although 39.3% of Detroit’s residents were living

below the poverty line as of 2013 (US Census, 2013), Whole Foods’ opened a location in

Midtown Detroit in March of 2013 and has seen steady success ever since, “Whole Foods

officials acknowledge that it is in the top 10 percent of all stores in the country from the

standpoint of sales per square foot.” (Cummings, Peter, 2017, JGA).

Changes towards food equality should include a focus on community revitalization

concerning food access but it should not instigate gentrification, which is a very fine line to

establish. The introduction of grocery chains like Whole Foods into lower-income

neighborhoods has been shown to ignite property value increases because the addition of

important food infrastructure greatly increases a neighborhood’s value, and can bring about

gentrification. The aforementioned Detroit Whole Foods made a big point of community

outreach by including the community in seminars about how to shop for healthy foods on a

budget at their stores, a new community kitchen within the store, and in providing long-term

employment for many Midtown community members. Huge corporations’, like Whole Foods

and Trader Joe’s, presence in lower-income areas is not a stand-alone solution to addressing food

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insecurity though, because these types of initiatives come with a lot of caveats. Detroit’s Whole

Foods is a pretty unique phenomenon that has inspired other openings of Whole Foods in

Oakland, Chicago, and Englewood, but the lack of regulation surrounding grocery stores’

location let companies (like Whole Foods, if they felt inclined to) be at their discretion when

choosing a location and continuing this trend of leaving behind low-income communities in the

name of maximizing profit.

A possible solution to the issue of prospective gentrification is instead, revitalizing

existing mom-and-pops shops within food deserts from liquor stores promoting Big Tobacco into

corner stores that offer a range of affordable produce through the work and funding of

non-profits and local government initiatives. Instead of moving in multi-national corporations

into food deserts, many grassroots activists push that food access can be improved through the

implementation of primarily community-led restorative measures. A major tool in fighting

systematic suppression is the idea of mutual aid and a reliance on the community more than

municipalities, which can be seen throughout US history. The Black Panthers have started many

community-based food justice initiatives that have aimed to serve Black and working-class

American communities within redlined and segregated neighborhoods, like the Free Breakfast

for Children program which operated in different US cities with Black Panther chapters.

Community gardens, kitchens, and fridges operated by and for community members are frequent

sights within food deserts, and there have even been entire non-profit community grocery stores

like Community Market Foods in Oakland (which recently closed its doors for good due to

COVID-related financial instability).

Although the self-reliance of communities is very important in addressing food insecurity, the

government-subsidization of grocery stores is vital in confronting food inequality; most

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metropolitan cities’ local governments provide incentives to grocery businesses that open up in

lower-income neighborhoods, like New York City’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health

(FRESH) initiative, through lowered building, land, and sales taxes. These stores founded within

expansion initiatives have to follow nutritional guidelines like they have to carry at least 30%

perishable foods and 500 square feet to produce (Elbel, B., et. al, 2015, Assessment of a

government-subsidized supermarket in a high-need area on household food availability and

children’s dietary intakes. Public Health Nutrition). In New York, the availability of FRESH

supermarkets showed “a significant decrease in BMI z score among students who resided within

0.50 miles of a FRESH supermarket (vs control group students) in the 3- to 12-month follow-up

period” (Rummo, Pasquale E., 2022, Association Between a Policy to Subsidize Supermarkets in

Underserved Areas and Childhood Obesity Risk). These government-subsidized stores must

operate alongside programs like CalFresh and SNAP that cover the purchasing of perishable

foods and produce, not necessarily in place of them.

Community Health & Environmental Racism in Redlined Areas

A seemingly small effect of redlining that has major social and environmental

implications is the distribution of tree canopy cover in urban and previously “Hazardous” or

D-grade, redlined areas. Tree canopy cover refers to the measure of the percentage of ground

covered by trees and vegetation and has not only aesthetic landscaping ramifications but also

very real climate and temperature effects. Tree canopy cover helps reduce air pollution through

plants’ absorption of carbon dioxide and their release of oxygen through photosynthesis, their

ability to increase humidity, and their ability to passively absorb pollutants on external leaf

surfaces and plant root-soil systems (Brilli, Frederico, et. al, 2018, Plants for Sustainable

Improvement of Indoor Air Quality). Formerly redlined, or D-graded areas have been shown to

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have 21 percentage points less tree canopy cover than areas formerly A-graded, and an area with

more tree canopy cover can average anywhere between 20-45 degrees cooler than an unshaded

area (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2021, Using Trees and Vegetation to

Reduce Heat Islands). People who live in food deserts often find themselves having to travel

from their hotter redlined neighborhoods to non-food deserts to get groceries. A study conducted

in 1996 by Scott Gottlieb of the US FDA found that only 22% of food stamp recipients owned

cars, meaning that many food desert residents have to rely on public transportation to get to

grocery destinations outside their neighborhoods. Most residents who use public transport find

themselves having to walk miles to and from bus or trolley stops with their weeks’ worth of

groceries, which can be a strenuous task for older or injured people (many lower-income

Americans work jobs that require manual labor), which, when combined with the extra heat and

lack of infrastructure that makes for non-walkable routes within food deserted areas, makes

getting healthy foods in the hotter seasons a big burden. Food deserts are infamous for being

America’s most un-walkable neighborhoods.

As mentioned in the previous section, many communities facing food insecurity start

community gardens as a grassroots way of addressing food apartheid, but these inherently higher

levels of industrial emissions in tandem with the inequality of tree canopy cover and natural

plant landscaping in formerly redlined upkeep environmental racism and have been shown to

affect urban farming and the quality of community gardens’ produce. Not only does air pollution

affect urban farming’s crop yields, but it also is shown to contribute to soil pollution and the

heavily debated possibility of health risks associated with eating soil-polluted produce. An

extensive trial conducted on crops farmed in an urban area of southwest England showed that

vegetables planted in contaminated soil with direct soil-interaction proved to be big sources of

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toxic metals in horticulture produce (A. Mehrag, Andrew, 2016, Perspective: City farming needs

monitoring).

Through zoning laws like redlining that pushed many BIPOC Americans precisely into

industrial radii, formerly redlined areas have been shown to have higher levels of air pollution

and particulate matter than non-redlined areas to this day. It’s important to remember that the

carbon footprint gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10% is huge - it’s estimated that the

world’s richest 10 percent of people have carbon footprints that are 60 times higher than the

poorest 10 percent, according to Oxfam. A study that examined PM2.5 and NO2 levels of

redlined areas showed that “. . . pollution levels have a consistent and nearly monotonic

association with HOLC grade, with especially pronounced (>50%) increments in NO2 levels

between the most (grade A) and least (grade D) preferentially graded neighborhoods” (Environ.

Sci. Technol. Lett., 2022, Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day Air Pollution

Disparities in U.S. Cities). High levels of PM2.5 and NO2 are shown to lead to an increased risk

of lung and heart-related hospitalizations, acute and chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and much

more heightened respiratory risks to COVID-19. During most of San Diego’s COVID lockdown,

officials saw southern parts of the county housing the highest rates of COVID infections and

deaths. Southern San Diego County encompasses a good portion of the county’s food deserts and

are areas with some of San Diego’s worst air quality levels. Along with respiratory issues

associated with food deserts, the high rate of diabetes and obesity associated with living in food

deserts made food deserted communities even more at risk of infection and death in the face of

the pandemic.

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Conclusion

Food is essential to human life. Through the industrialization of the food system, food

has become privatized and commodified, making access seem like a luxury instead of a human

right. America is very privileged in terms of food insecurity when contrasted to geopolitically

exploited countries, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an important enough issue to be addressed.

When we examine the state of our modern food system here in the US, we very quickly realize

food inequality is an issue America has manufactured but has yet to converse about on a

nationally mainstream scale. Although my research has very barely scratched the surface, a call

to action isn’t hidden deep within my unearthed research. Whether it’s through participating in

local government via calling for the building of infrastructure that would help lessen food

inequality, or volunteering with local mutual aid organizations, there’s already so much tangible

work every one of us could be doing.

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Works Cited

- A. Mehrag, Andrew, 2016, Perspective: City farming needs monitoring

- Brilli, Frederico, et. al, 2018, Plants for Sustainable Improvement of Indoor Air Quality

- Commission on Civil Rights, 1959

- Cummings, Peter, 2017, JGA

- Dutko, Paul, et al., 2012, USDA

- Elbel, B., et. al, 2015, Assessment of a government-subsidized supermarket in a

high-need area on household food availability and children’s dietary intakes. Public

Health Nutrition

- Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett., 2022, Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day

Air Pollution Disparities in U.S. Cities

- Federal Reserve, 2020, Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2016 to 2019: Evidence

from the Survey of Consumer Finances Changes

- Hannah-Jones, Nikole, 2019, 1619 Project

- Mendez-Carbajo, Diego, 2021, Neighborhood Redlining, Racial Segregation, and

Homeownership

- National Retail Federation, 2020, 2020 Organized Retail Crime Survey

- Rummo, Pasquale E., 2022, Association Between a Policy to Subsidize Supermarkets in

Underserved Areas and Childhood Obesity Risk

- United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2021, Using Trees and Vegetation to

Reduce Heat Islands

- University of Richmond, Mapping Inequality

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- US Census Bureau, Apr. 2022

- US Census Bureau, 2013

- Wheelock, David, The Great Depression: An Overview

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