West Hill grocer denied status as a WIC vendor
State health department rolling out new electronic system; says decision to come
Fresh produce, infant formula and other staples of a healthy diet line the aisles of a small
West Hill grocery store as owner Dileep Rathore makes lively conversation with patrons.
He whips up breakfast sandwiches and lunch subs for the small group of neighborhood residents gathered in his store, the Fresh Neighborhood Market, on a chilly, sunny March day. A group of elementary school children burst through the store’s entrance at one point, coming in to jovially banter with Rathore over what they can buy with a dollar bill.
In the afternoon, parents wait for the school bus to drop their kids off just outside his store at First and Judson — a block from where a man was killed and another injured in a shooting last December.
Two blocks west, at First and Quail, another man, Khalil Barnes, was murdered last July.
Rathore doesn’t sell tobacco or alcohol, as he seeks to provide a safe place for neighbors and children amid the sporadic violence the neighborhood has experienced.
But since opening in November, Rathore was denied his application to become a Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, vendor, which would have allowed him to accept the government-issued payment used by low-income women who are pregnant or breastfeeding or have children younger than 5.
“I don’t sell beer,” Rathore said, noting that he’s forgoing an easy stream of revenue in what’s been described as a food desert, where liquor stores outnumber food stores. “We keep it lively. Anybody can walk in, no thugs are hanging out. No one is pushing drugs on you,” he said. “We always try to make sure our store is clean.
“I don’t have a big corporation, I don’t get state funds,” Rathore said. “Whatever money I make in my job, I invest in my community.”
The building at 16 Judson St. bore the infamous red X sign as recently as 2017, before Rathore redeveloped the location, which now offers items not commonly found at grocery stores in the Albany neighborhood.
WIC beneficiaries use paper vouchers at approved stores for items like infant formula, cereal, milk, fruits and vegetables, eggs, cheese and other healthy foods.
Albany County Legislator Norma Chapman and state Assemblyman John Mcdonald have pressed the state about its decision not to accept Rathore as a WIC vendor.
In a statement, the state Department of Health said it paused WIC vendor applications throughout upstate last October
as the department implements EWIC, according to Jill Montag, a NYSDOH spokeswoman.
Under the new EWIC program, WIC recipients will be issued a plastic debit card to buy Wicapproved foods. The program is meant to simplify the store checkout process and reduce fraud associated with the WIC program.
“The statewide rollout of EWIC, an electronic benefits transfer card, which eliminates paper checks and provides a more convenient way for families in the Women, Infants, and Children program to shop for WIC foods, is a top priority for the New York State Department of Health,” Montag said in a statement.
The approved WIC vendors for the 12206 ZIP code include Savea-lot, Price Chopper, Shoprite and Hannaford grocery stores, all located on Central Avenue, more than a mile from Rathore’s grocery store.
Community residents, many of whom don’t own a vehicle, said they have to make the trek to one of the grocery stores either on foot or by taxi or bus.
Michelle Cox lives across the street from Rathore’s store. Throughout the winter, Cox, who is pregnant, said she hasn’t been able to afford bus fare every time she needs to go to the grocery store and has walked to the store to get infant formula for her 1-year-old child.
“If you run out of formula, you don’t really have a choice whether there’s snow on the ground or not. You have to just go to the store to get it,” Cox said.
But many residents lose money by having to pay for transportation to their WIC vendor — making the governmentissued benefits less valuable, as residents let their benefits go unused because of the difficulty of making the trip to the grocery store. Cox also has an autistic 4-year-old son and a husband on disability. Many months, she said, she doesn’t use a large portion of her WIC benefits because the trip to the grocery store is too difficult to coordinate.
“It’s almost an hour down the street,” she said of the walk to the nearest WIC vendor. “Something right here in the neighborhood is what we need.”
Several other pregnant women or mothers of young children echoed her sentiments.
“I come here all the time, I need it,” Akiah Campbell, a West Hill resident who has two small children and is pregnant with a third, said of Rathore’s store. “We need (a WIC vendor) in the neighborhood, rather than being on the outskirts. Something right here would be perfect.”
The EWIC technology will be available for all WIC stores and recipients this spring, Montag said, but the vendor application pause will not be lifted until the fall.
And while that delay will mean West Hill residents will have to continue making the trip to the Central Avenue grocery stores outside of their neighborhood, residents in the abutting ZIP code—12210, which includes the Arbor Hill and Center Square neighborhoods—have even fewer places to use their WIC benefits.
On the state Department of Health’s WIC vendor map, the state has listed two WIC vendors for 12210. But neither of the two listed vendors, a Market 32 at 40 Delaware Ave. and a Price Chopper at 1060 Madison Ave., are actually in the 12210 ZIP code.
Rathore said his store, which is two blocks away from the 12210 border, could serve a large portion of the neighborhoods in that ZIP code that don’t currently have a WIC vendor nearby.
“Its frustrating to me because, as a health care practitioner, I know better than most that one of the challenges in communities is easy and affordable access to proper nutrition,” said Mcdonald, a pharmacist. “Dileep is trying to fill that gap, and unfortunately, right now the DOH rollout of the new electronic system is what’s complicating the process.”
“The frustration with the bureaucracy is legitimate,” Mcdonald said, “and we’re trying to burst through it.”
Mcdonald said he considers it a “matter of when, not if” Rathore’s grocery store becomes an approved WIC vendor, something he said could happen as soon as October.
“The problem is, it’s over 600 people that have WIC that cannot come to their neighborhood and get their WIC products,” said Chapman, who has represented West Hill in the County Legislature for 11 years. “Saying that (Rathore) has to wait until October, that’s not even saying that that’s going to happen.”
Rathore estimates he loses between $6,000 and $10,000 a month in sales by not being a WIC vendor, but said his biggest concern is people in the community not having access to the food they need.
“Making that money, I could hire some extra people from my own community. People are looking for work,” Rathore said.
“When the program is there to help people, it’s supposed to be taking care of people who really need to use that program,” he said. “What good is the program if people can’t utilize it?”