Getting out of ‘food desert’
Baltimore, Lyft to partner on low-cost rides for residents
At 81, Evelyn Robinson finds trips to the grocery store tiring and inconvenient. She either faces a long bus ride from her Cherry Hill neighborhood to the Shoppers Food several miles away, or else finds a grandkid or fellow church member willing to drive her. She’ll often slip that person $20 for their time.
Many in Robinson’s South Baltimore community live in what’s considered a food desert, a place without easy access to a supermarket, and where few people have cars.
Through a new partnership with Lyft, Baltimore officials are hoping to make it easier and cheaper to connect people in low-income neighborhoods with healthy food.
Starting Monday, people in areas of South and West Baltimore can register online with the ride-share company and get subsidized trips to participating grocery stores. Up to 200 people can participate in the pilot program, which will provide one-way rides for $2.50 each. Each rider can take up to eight such trips per month through April.
“Whoa, that is lovely,” Robinson said. “I wouldn’t have to wait for someone to be available to take me or pay as much money. I could go whenever I wanted.”
About one in four people in Baltimore lives in a food desert. The designation means their area ranks poorly in a city measure of food store quality, has a low median income, more than 30% of its households don’t have cars, and it’s more than a quarter-mile from a supermarket.
While people in these neighborhoods are often close to a corner store selling
snack foods, it’s much harder to find fresh produce and other healthier options.
In these communities, which Baltimore now calls “healthy food priority areas,” residents walk long distances to get groceries. Some lug heavy bags home on the bus. Others pay people with cars — including hacks or unlicensed cabdrivers — high rates to take them back and forth.
The city is working to attract more supermarkets to underserved communities in Baltimore, including through a grocery store property tax credit.
In the meantime, officials say, they need quicker fixes. The city has tried other ways to improve access to healthy food, including a “virtual supermarket” that enables low-income people to order their groceries online and pick up their purchases at a designated place in their neighborhood.
“Sometimes you need to bring food to people and sometimes you need to bring people to food,” said Kristin Dawson of the Baltimore Development Corp.
Baltimore is one of more than a dozen cities partnering with Lyft on the grocery access program. The company started the program last year in Washington, D.C., and approached Baltimore officials about trying it here.
The first six months of the pilot will cost $73,000, paid for with a combination of city dollars, grant money the city receives under state law from casino revenue, and a contribution from Lyft.
“This innovative ride-share pilot not only helps residents get to and from the grocery store, but also reduces travel time and puts money back into the pockets of low-income residents so they are able to buy more healthy foods,” Democratic Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young said in a statement.
People in South Baltimore’s Cherry Hill, Lakeland and Westport communities will get rides to stores like Aldi, Harris Teeter and Shoppers.
In the section of West Baltimore that qualifies — bounded by West North Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, West Mulberry Street, West Franklin Street, Edmondson Avenue and Hilton Parkway — the program can take residents to 10 different groceries, including a Giant Food store off Edmondson Avenue and Eddie’s Supermarket on West Eager Street.
Mike Heslin, Lyft Baltimore’s general manager, said the rides they’re offering might typically cost four times as much using Lyft.
“It’s really about choice, flexibility, accessibility and ease,” said Holly Freishtat, Baltimore’s food policy director.
The idea sounds great to Ianthia Darden, 65, who lives in Harlem Park in West Baltimore. But she wondered how easy the program will be for people, like her, who don’t have smartphones. who came to Baltimore from Chicago in social hall, new bathrooms, ramps for Lyft is typically accessed through a the summer of 2010, said in an interview handicapped access, a new kitchen and phone app, though it can be used on a before Sunday’s ceremonies. “It was very more. All work was done within the desktop. Some older people, Darden much a contrary move to what most existing space, leaving the historic buildsaid, are not going to be interested in synagogues were doing.” ing’s footprint largely untouched. messing with this kind of new technol
But simply stayingogy.inthecitywasn’tForcedtorelocatewhiletheworkwas enough, the rabbi said. ongoing, the congregation held services at Morgan State University professor
Weaving itself into the fabric of the Mount Lebanon Baptist Church on Reiswill study the program to evaluate its community was necessary. Even with a terstown Road until the work was comeffectiveness. Already, officials are talkhealthy-sized congregation today of some pleted. ing about how they hope to expand into 465 households, the synagogue considers In all, Burg said, the congregation new neighborhoods and go beyond the it important to extend its reach beyond raised some $13 million, enough to not six-month pilot. the faithful. only pay for the renovations, but also set “That’s my primary concern,” said
“At some point, we realized that being up an endowment and cover other costs. Professor Celeste Chavis, who works in in the neighborhood was not sufficient, (A proud Rothenberg noted that 85% of Morgan’s transportation and urban inwe needed to get involved in the neighBeth Am’s membership contributed.) frastructure department. “I’m hoping borhood,” Burg said. “So, we started doing And the work might not be done; at it’ll be very successful, but if it is, the social action work, volunteerism at the some point, the rabbi said, Beth Amhopes primary objective will be how to make local school, neighborhood cleaning efto build on an adjacent piece of property, this something sustainable.” forts, collections for social charities. … We so the synagogue can move its offices There are far more swaths of the city do a lot of relational work, a lot of kind of from its current location, about 1 ½ miles that could use cheaper, more convenient softening boundaries, getting to know our away in Charles Village. access to stores. About 146,000 people neighbors, hosting them in our building, But for now, Beth Am and its congregalive in food deserts, and roughly 124,500 going out into the community and particition are happy to bask in the glow of their of those residents are black. That’s about pating in community events in Reservoir new digs. a third of Baltimore’s African American Hill.” “It’s amazing to just walk around and population.
The list of outside groups that meet at think about what it used to look like, and City officials hope this will help at Beth Amis long, says David I. Rothenberg, how nice it is now,” said Reservoir Hill least some of them. the synagogue’s executive director: the resident Ashley Pressman, 43, who came “Let’s just make it easy for people to Upper Eutaw Madison Neighborhood to the ceremonies with her sons, Max, 8, get food,” Freishtat said, “healthy food.” Association, Jews United for Justice, and Ethan, 6. “The way they’ve done the
Residents Against the Tunnels and more, communal gathering spaces is really including Girl Scout troops and adult nice.” education classes. Lifelong Beth Am congregant Amy
“We want to be a central location for Nathanson, 42, who brought along her the neighborhood,” he said while preparson, Max, 4 (“and a half,” he stressed), ing for Sunday’s ceremonies. agreed.
That goal can only be helped by the “It’s very exciting, and it’s really turned renovations project, which included reout wonderfully. Being that we do live in configuring the area downstairs into the city, keeping this in the community is classroom and meeting spaces, adding a definitely very important to us.”
“Sometimes you need to bring food to people and sometimes you need to bring people to food.”
Kristin Dawson, of the Baltimore Development Corp.