From the USDA: The Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) working group defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. To qualify as a "low-access community," at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles). As you can see in the images from the USDA Food Desert locator, the majority of downtown is within one of these census tracts and is a low-access community. Availability and proximity to a grocer needs to be improved for quality of life in the urban core. As reported in the census, there are 857 people living in the tract. 100% of people living in the highlighted tract have low access. 29.9 % of the total population is low-income and has low access. This is a big issue as we explore building up and not out (suburban sprawl) as population numbers continue to grow in the region. Target on West 7th and the weekly farmer's market during the summer have helped.
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