Building a supermarket in a food desert poses a risk that residents who benefit from shopping at the market pay to do so through increased rents.
Mayor Brandon Johnson recently announced that his administration is exploring city-owned supermarkets as a solution to persistent food deserts . It is an understandable response to a complicated, local problem. Various attempts to harness the power of free enterprise to provide access to groceries and fresh produce to the residents of lower-income Chicago communities have failed, as evidenced by the closure of markets such as the Englewood Whole Foods and the Auburn Gresham Aldi’s.
But it does mean there are trade-offs: access to groceries versus higher rents. How much rents go up depends on how much we expect housing supply to increase in response to increased demand — a quantity the city should estimate before moving forward with any policy change. Even absent such estimates, there are reasons to worry. If residents of lower-income neighborhoods preferred to live closer to a supermarket in exchange for higher rent, they might have chosen a different neighborhood.
Mayor City-Owned Supermarkets Food Deserts Lower-Income Communities Chicago
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