New stores to fight city’s food insecurity

“A Lidl, which  will open at Skyland Town Center on Good Hope Road Southeast at the end of 2022, will be the first new grocery store serving residents in Wards 7 and 8 in more than a decade,” according to Natalia Vanegas, from the office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED).

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowers described the Skyland project as a multi-year, multi-phase development that will bring retail and residential space to Ward 7, adding, “this project will add hundreds of jobs, bring significant tax revenue for the District, and catalyze additional private development in the area.”

According to D.C. Hunger, which works to create hunger-free communities, Wards 5, 7 and  8, have significantly fewer full-service grocery stores and lack sufficient and reliable access to healthy and affordable food.

These food deserts appear to be growing the most in Ward 7 and 8. Those wards are located more than half a mile from grocery stores or supermarkets, have low rates of car access, and have a high poverty rate, the D.C. Policy Center reported. 

“Part of the reason Ward 7 and 8 residents are at higher risk of food insecurity is because there are not enough healthy, affordable food options in their neighborhoods. The Fiscal Year 2022 District budget includes significant new investments,” the DMPED said.

“This includes $58 million over three years for a new Food Access Fund to support the development of grocery stores and sit-down restaurants in Wards 7 and 8. It also includes $4 million for the Nourish DC Fund to support community ownership of local food businesses through grants, loans, and technical assistance.”

The pandemic intensified food insecurity and hunger in the D.C. region particularly in communities of color. The District's Office of Planning reported that Black households were 13.5 times more likely to not have enough food to eat than White households in the city, while Latino households were 6.5 times more likely to not have enough food to eat than White households.  

And according to Feeding America in the District of Columbia, 70,480 people are facing hunger, and of them 19,250 are children. “Early in the pandemic in June 2020, 21.1% of District residents were food insecure, almost double the pre-COVID rate of 10.6%. By June 2021, 11% of District residents were food insecure,” a DMPED spokesperson said, “However, this overall number overlooks the continued heighted food insecurity rates among Black and Latinx residents, children, and seniors."

The city said that it has introduced several programs to help alleviate the problem. 

“We have operated far-reaching emergency feeding programs, such as the GetHelp Hotline and Grocery/Meal Distribution at DCPS schools, and worked with federal partners to expand nutrition assistance programs like universal free school meals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) Program for families with children,” DMPED said.

Meanwhile, Lidl will open its second store in D.C. at 3100 14th St. NW, on the ground level of the city’s largest retail development, joining Target, Best Buy, and Marshall, one block away from an existing Giant Food store. It is scheduled to open at the end of the year.