The mayor of New York, the world capital of capitalism, wants the city to open public stores with affordable food for the poor. The reason: about 1,4 million inhabitants of the Big Apple are unable to provide themselves with the necessary food on a regular basis
Newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani suggests that New York open a network of publicly-owned food stores because approximately one in seven residents (14–15 percent of the city's population) face food insecurity. This means that, according to data from the City Council, in the last 12 months, 1,2 million people could not provide enough food due to lack of money and other resources, the New York City Council announced.
The rate of food insecurity in certain parts of the city varies, but in some poorer neighborhoods it amounts to over 30 percent, according to data from the city assembly of this city.
In a survey by a humanitarian organization Community Service Society (CSS), which has existed since 1839, one in five New Yorkers (about 24 percent) reported food insecurities (eg, skipping meals or relying on free meals). Among low-income households (200 percent below the federal poverty line), that rate was as high as 38 percent. In that group of poorer households, a significantly higher proportion of people report problems buying food due to high costs, according to New York City Council statistics.
Definition of food insecurity
According to US federal standards (USDA), a person is food insecure if during the previous 12 months the household did not have reliable access to a sufficient amount of nutritionally adequate food due to lack of money or some other reason. The USDA distinguishes two main degrees of low food security: if people cannot buy enough calories, cannot regularly afford quality and varied food, switch to cheaper, poorer foods, or reduce the nutritional value of meals, skip fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, rely on ultra-processed foods, "stretch" it to the end of the month, reduce the amount of food, skip meals, starve for shorter or longer periods, parents skip meals so that children eat, eat regularly rely on soup kitchens.
In the survey, the USDA uses a standardized questionnaire - 18 questions for households with children, 10 without children:
- "Were you worried about running out of food before you got the money to buy more?"
- "Did you skip meals because you didn't have enough money?"
- "Did you eat less than you thought you should?"
- "Were you hungry, but you didn't eat because you couldn't afford food...?"
According to American standards, you don't have to starve to be considered a person who "can't afford food", it's enough that you regularly don't have money for a nutritionally adequate diet, that you have to choose between food and rent, transportation, medicine, you eat worse and less healthy because of the price.
Mamdani proposed not only that the city open publicly owned grocery stores but also provide free public transportation, a rent freeze, and free early education. In addition to already existing universal preschool programs and school meals - these measures could contribute to the relief of household budgets, freeing up money for sufficient and nutritionally quality nutrition.
New York already has experience with such operations. Public schools in the city serve 900.000 meals every day through the universal school breakfast and lunch program. This is achieved through a complex logistics system of procurement, storage and distribution of basic foodstuffs on a large scale.
Associate Professor of Political Sciences at the Institute Pratt and Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg of the National Humanities Center analyzed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's idea of public grocery stores in New Republic magazine.
In the text of this magazine, proponents of the idea point to the uncontrolled growth of food prices and the need to provide fresh food to neglected communities in the Big Apple. Critics, on the other hand, argue that the public sector should stay out of the food business, because otherwise it could produce Soviet-style bread lines and mass shoplifting.
An article in the New Republic states that for the system to be effective, the city's stores would have to compete with the big chains in reducing the price of food (which is difficult without clear subsidies) and focus firmly on staples.
The authors suggest that direct support to household budgets (such as free transport, rent freezes or free early education) is likely to relieve household costs and lead to higher food consumption more than public shops alone. Direct public supermarkets owned by cities in the US are rare and often experimental — no major city has a long-term stable model yet, but there have been attempts in Kansas City and plans in Chicago. Non-profit and joint initiatives (food banks, cooperatives, shared refrigerators) exist throughout the country and serve as practical support for access to food for "people in need", as social workers call the socially vulnerable category.
Although no major American city has opened a classic publicly-owned to date
full-scale supermarkets, smaller towns and communities have experimented with different
models of public or public-private stores and programs. Kansas City Sun Fresh je
an example of encouraging a store that has been given significant funding by the authorities to operate in less
served neighborhood — but faces operational challenges and possible closure due to low traffic and safety concerns.
In Chicago, the city has considered opening a city grocery store in response to a lack of available healthy food in some parts of the city, but it remains in the planning stages. Some models combined public and private elements, such as a pilot program in New York City where a nonprofit partner gave residents credit for ordering food with Basket Market platform that relies on local supermarkets.
Berkeley Student Food Collective is an example of a non-profit self-managed food store, whose goal is to sell affordable, local and organically grown produce and educate the community about food systems.
PCC Community Markets is an example of a cooperative, in which members have ownership
benefits and participation in store organization, thereby supporting local food availability, although not necessarily specifically for the poor.
Feeding america is the largest network of non-profit food banks in the US, which collects and
distributes food through local organizations and to help vulnerable people across the country.
Rethink Food works on collecting surplus food from restaurants and shops and preparing it
nutritional meals for low-income beneficiaries in several cities.
There are also local initiatives such as Phat Beets Produce or various shared fridge projects (community fridge), where the community organizes free access
feeds without barriers of stigma or administrative registration.
Common agriculture programs such as Corbin Hill Food Project enable affordable distribution directly from farms to communities, often with support for low-income residents and acceptance of SNAP (American Food Assistance Cards).
Food as a public good
Federal nutrition assistance through USDA programs such as SNAP, WIC, and school
meals includes a large portion of the American population that struggles with food insecurity.
The argument in favor of public stores in New York usually goes like this: a significant number of people
- hundreds of thousands, and according to some estimates up to three million - live in so-called "food deserts", that is, in areas where there is no fresh and affordable food available within a mile radius. This can lead to low-income families depending on more expensive or unhealthier options. The problem is exacerbated by rising food prices, caused in part by the consolidation and greed of large corporate chains.
In this context, a public grocery option would challenge corporate dominance and combat food insecurity, treating food as a public good and food provision as something akin to a utility – like “water, transport or libraries”, as Alex Birnell put it: “Essential infrastructure that belongs to the people”. Public stores would not only provide access to affordable food, but could become centers of well-paid work and "value-based" procurement of quality food, turning "food deserts" into bountiful gardens of abundance.
However, there is little evidence that "food deserts" - a term suggesting that physical distance is the biggest barrier to healthy and affordable food - is a decisive factor in cities. That concept fits far better in the rural context, where corporate consolidation has led to the closure of local stores, forcing consumers to rely on scarce local options like Dollar general or that they travel unacceptably long distances to get fresh food (the US Department of Agriculture defines a rural food desert as an area where a significant portion of the population lives more than 10 miles from a grocery store).
In the countryside, the case for public shops is strong – although the experiments so far have been mixed.
The situation in New York is much more unclear. Nearly 15 percent of New Yorkers are food insecure, and more than 40 percent of the city's families say they can't afford food. Many of them live in the very neighborhoods earmarked for Mamdani's planned public stores. But their common problem is not location, but income. Urban food deserts—defined by the USDA as areas where people live within a mile of the nearest fresh food store—do not necessarily create food insecurity, but rather reflect income inequality. In other words, people affected by food insecurity live in food deserts because they are less desirable housing locations with lower rents, ie. because they are poor.
Research shows again and again that in American cities, distance to a grocery store is not a major determinant of diet or health outcomes. One influential 2019 paper found that supply-side factors explained only nine percent of nutritional inequality between low- and high-income households. Price and personal preference shape diet much more than proximity to a store, and many consumers are willing to travel further if it means cheaper food.
Or, in Mamdani's words: affordability is at the heart of the problem. Relocating stores – or
poor people - does not put money in their pockets for dinner.
An additional problem is that the big retailers really do offer low prices, which is a strong argument if the goal is to improve access. It is also true that these chains contribute to a whole range of problems, from preventing unionization to possible price fixing that marginally raises some food prices. Still, huge economies allow retail giants to offer most consumers the lowest prices on the products they want—even when accounting for corporate greed and food price inflation.
Studies, for example, show that it is Walmart, thanks to low prices, a reliable source of affordable and fresh, nutritious food for households affected by food insecurity. Combined with the previous proximity argument, this explains why chains are like Walmart so tough competition for smaller, independent retailers: if proximity only matters when you can compete on price, then a few Goliaths will always – unfortunately – outnumber an entire army of Davids.
Critics of Mamdani's plans take these arguments and conclude that food should i
continue to be treated as a private rather than a public good, and that we should rely on market solutions that would encourage those Goliaths to help neglected communities. Why, they ask, wouldn't the city stimulate chains like Walmart to open in such neighborhoods? In fact, New York City is already investing tens of millions of dollars through the City's Economic Development Corporation into six public markets that lease space to food vendors and small retailers at below-market rents. It is the legacy of Fiorello La Guardia, whom Mamdani often cites as his greatest
mayoral inspiration.
But expanding this approach to attract large retail chains is not certain. Like
for profit companies, corporate chains go where the money is. There's a reason they didn't
opened en masse in neglected neighborhoods, and there is no guarantee that government incentives would
forced them to do so – or to stay there. In Atlanta, for example, the city tried unsuccessfully for years to attract private retailers to poorer parts of the city. In Chicago, the city spent more than $10 million to encourage it Whole Foods to open on the south side of town, but the store closed after just six years. Grocery stores generate large revenues but operate on tight margins, which is one reason they often don't open—or survive—in poorer neighborhoods. The preference of free market ideologues to leave everything to the private sector does not work if the private sector is unable or unwilling to help.
This is an example of market failure, and it is traditionally considered the task of the state to intervene in order to serve the public interest. However, the dynamics of this particular market make public stores a risky venture. Cities can't fight the big antitrust battles needed to curb chain consolidation—that's the job of federal regulators. Therefore, public stores would have to compete in the existing market, which means they would have to match corporate retailers on price and assortment. By eliminating rent and property tax costs, the city may be able to make this model sustainable in the long run, but only if the stores stick strictly to their core mission. Well-intentioned initiatives like sourcing from local farms or other forms of "value-based" purchasing would lead to higher prices and likely make them unsustainable.
It's nice to imagine shopping in a store whose shelves are filled with fresh and healthy produce from idyllic Hudson Valley farms and ethical artisan producers. But that is not necessary
imagine - such luxury stores already abound, with "farm to table" offerings at prices that are out of reach for most working people. If New York City's grocery stores looked like that, they would only push people affected by food insecurity back to the cheaper conventional stores where they already shop. Without a complete rethinking of city budgets, municipal stores would have to rely on the conventional, industrial food system and focus solely on providing basic foods at the lowest possible prices.
Still, it's worth pausing to look at the bigger picture of food insecurity. Cheaper staple foods
they could help vulnerable consumers, but public shops would have to offer significantly lower prices to really make a difference - which seems unlikely without a permanent and significant public subsidy, on top of rent and tax exemptions. And in that case, it might be more effective to simply give vulnerable people more cash. Mamdani's agenda
accessibility is necessary. But his best solutions to food security lie not in food itself, but in policies that relieve family budgets. Seen from that angle, the public store debate could be a misguided distraction.
"New Republic" estimates that, in fact, Mamdani's other measures - and not public shops
of food – could offer more useful models for cities looking to tackle the problem of food insecurity.
In fact, the more money people have in their pockets, the less they have to spend on other essentials
needs, they can spend more on food, wherever they decide to shop. Those policies may not be as enticing as a market with local producers, but they are much more likely to feed people.
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