Struggle to attract grocers results in food apartheid for New Orleans
17th April 2023 · 0 Comments
By Tyana Jackson
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Before Hurricane Katrina, about 5,000 households called the Lower 9th Ward home. Today, less than half of that number resides in the neighborhood. Most work in tourist-driven industries — restaurants, hotels and retail — where jobs are readily available but often lower-paying.
There are no chain supermarkets in the Lower 9th Ward, which was scoured beyond recognition in 2005 when levees failed during Katrina. As former and new residents slowly bring life back, a lone, locally-owned corner store has attempted to fill the fresh food void. The scarcity includes fruits, vegetables, seafood and most other staples shoppers elsewhere in the city and suburbs take for granted.
“Everyone knows that the Lower 9th Ward is an underprivileged area. By me being the only grocery business there, it has become a lot of pressure. But you have to find your passion, and my passion is service,” said Burnell Colton, owner of Burnell’s Lower 9th Market. “I used to only work in the store three to four times a week. But now, since the demand is so high, I am here about six to seven days a week.”
Community organizations and a handful of businesses like Colton’s continue to combat food deserts in New Orleans. The lack of options, also known as food apartheid, comes from a challenging microeconomic landscape that makes fresh food inaccessible to mostly poor, Black communities in not just the Lower 9th Ward but also portions of New Orleans East, Uptown and the Westbank.
New Orleans is filled with a rich cultural connection to food, but the issue is that many neighborhoods are also food swamps, where an abundance of unhealthy food choices are prevalent. This results in a structural racism illustrated in the disparity of food distribution, said Chelsea Singleton, a nutritional epidemiologist with Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
“It’s hard for them to attract retailers or people who want to invest because they see the community and, for whatever reason, they don’t think there is a need for the community…” Singleton said. “The business is so bad and a lot of that is rooted in racism because most of the neighborhoods are lower income.”
A Fresh Food Retailer Initiative (FFRI), started under former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, sought to prime local grocer growth through $14 million of federal Community Development Block Grants. Businesses were offered the money to open grocery stores in underserved areas, yet the program faltered from a lack of success and interest. Outside of the Whole Foods development in Mid-City, other New Orleans locations funded with FFRI investments have struggled.
The Dryades Public Market in Central City, originally known as Jack & Jake’s, was shuttered in 2019 despite receiving a $1 million FFRI loan. A smaller seafood market nearby also failed, and Circle Foods in the 7th Ward has struggled through changes in ownership.
City officials acknowledge there is a correlation between the difficulty to attract fresh food grocers and bringing other types of commerce and services to areas slower to rebound since Katrina. Wesley Bishop is a former state senator and current policy director for Councilman Oliver Thomas, who represents the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East.
“We are constantly trying to drive more businesses, whether family-based, restaurants or grocery stores…” Bishop said. “I don’t think that access to healthy foods is really any different than access to family agencies, to grocery stores or access to any basic needs that people have in a community. After Hurricane Katrina, part of the issue with the Lower 9th Ward is that it has taken much longer than expected to repopulate the area.”
Smaller scale efforts to address fresh food needs have been welcomed in the neighborhood. Sankofa Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that strives to build healthier communities, started a popular community garden in the Lower 9th Ward. The success of Bolton’s store led him to add a coin laundry, a snowball stand and offer plate lunches.
“I didn’t know what a food desert was when I first started,” he said. “The closest grocery store is a Walmart in the next city, Chalmette, and I noticed people from the Lower 9th walking all the way there or taking three city buses to get their groceries.
“This is not a third-world country. This is New Orleans, this is the United States of America. I think things have changed tremendously with the success of my store.”
This article originally published in the April 17, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
