Lawmakers are considering creating a grant program that would send state dollars to grocers in Illinois communities that have few options for buying food.
Senate Bill 850 would direct the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, or DCEO, to establish the “Grocery Initiative,” a program that would study “food deserts” in Illinois and provide grants to new or existing grocery stores in these areas. The grants would be available to grocery stores that are organized as independently owned for-profits, co-ops and nonprofit organizations as well as grocery stores owned by units of local government.
“It’s incredibly expensive to run a grocery store,” bill sponsor Rep. Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, said in an interview. “It takes a lot of product and your margins are very thin.”
The initiative was first introduced in Gov. JB Pritzker’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which called for $20 million to fund the program. Canty, who is sponsoring the proposal in the House, said she will continue to work on it in the next two weeks as lawmakers craft next year’s budget.
Canty said she views the proposal as a way to interrupt violence and alleviate some of the root causes of crime.
“Without food security, people are desperate and desperate people do desperate things,” Canty said.
The bill defines food deserts as low-income communities that are at least a half-mile from a grocery store in urban areas and at least 10 miles from a grocery store in rural areas.
Approximately 3.3 million people – about one in four Illinois residents – live in a food desert, according to a 2021 Illinois Department of Public Health report that used data from the United States Department of Agriculture. This dataset was first published in 2019 and was last updated in 2021.
Over one-quarter of Illinoisans live in a "food desert"
The USDA also measures food access in communities using other thresholds. One-mile and 20-mile thresholds would still include 1.1 million Illinoisans – about 9 percent of the state’s population, according to that IDPH report.
Tito Quiñones, who works on legislative affairs for the DCEO, spoke to lawmakers at a hearing on the bill last week.
“This is a statewide issue and I think it connects different parts of the state over this issue of food insecurity,” Quiñones said.
According to a weekly survey from the U.S. Census Bureau that has tracked things like food insecurity since the start of the pandemic, about 9.4 percent of households in Illinois reported “sometimes” or “often” not having enough food to eat over a seven-day period early last month.
This figure is higher for people of color. About 14.4 percent of Hispanic and Latino households reported that level of food insecurity during the same period. About 18.5 percent of respondents who reported two or more races on the survey indicated they also struggled. For white households, the figure was 8 percent.
Source: wglt.org
Photo Credit: GettyImages-FatCamera
Categories: Illinois, Rural Lifestyle