By Amanda Li, Junior Policy Associate
Park Slope Key Food, Flushing Met Foods, Clinton Hill Key Food, Williamsburg Key Food, Gowanus Pathmark, Boerum Hill Met Foods, Washington Heights Associated, East Harlem Pathmark, Chelsea Associated, Park Slope Eagle Provisions, Upper East Side Food Emporium, City Fresh…
And so begins the list of grocery stores that have closed across New York City over the last few years. This widespread closing of supermarkets has left many people with little to no option for healthy, affordable foods. Even among the stores that have survived the closures, food prices are increasingly rising. Seniors are among the groups of people who are most impacted by trends restricting access to healthy foods.
Many seniors in New York City cannot access healthy food. Not only do they face physical barriers in accessing healthy food (i.e. lack of close-by grocery stores, difficulty getting around the city due to age-related mobility issues), but many also face economic constraints. In fact, approximately 154,000 seniors depend on food pantries or soup kitchens for food, almost 20% of the city’s seniors are living beneath the federal poverty level, and in 2010, 28% of seniors living in the city had trouble affording food. It is so important that seniors get the nutrients they need to support their bodies and minds as they age, and these statistics show that over 1 in 4 seniors living in NYC struggle to do so.
An array of programs have been developed to help make healthy food more accessible to the city’s seniors. Some programs include SNAP, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Fresh Food for Seniors, God’s Love We Deliver, Health Bucks, Access-A-Ride for transportation to grocery stores, and the Foodbox Program. And fortunately, in the past few years, there has been an increase in initiatives to get fresh, healthy, high-quality local produce in meals at places that seniors frequent like soup kitchens and senior centers. For instance, the local farms that provide fresh produce for upscale restaurants like Craft and Bouley are now also supplying ample fresh fruits and vegetables to the senior center run by the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House.
In support of initiatives to make healthy, fresh, and nutritious foods accessible for all, the city is preparing to establish a New York State Greenmarket Regional Food Hub in the Bronx, a $20 million food hub based in one of GrowNYC’s warehouses. This food hub will help directly distribute freshly-grown fruits and vegetables from local farms to community programs and institutions that are too large for piecemeal purchases at local farmers markets yet too small for bulk purchases from commercial suppliers.
DASH-NY strongly supports initiatives to increase healthy food access across New York State. One of DASH-NY’s policy priorities for 2017 is supporting the adoption of food policies that require food and beverages purchased with government funds to meet certain nutrition standards. DASH-NY is currently partnering with Farm to Institution New York State (FINYS) to highlight the health and economic benefits of local food procurement across NYS agencies in support of this priority. DASH-NY’s efforts, along with other initiatives across the state, will hopefully bring healthy, fresh, nutritious, and locally produced meals onto the plates of every New Yorker, including our seniors.