Mayor Brandon Johnson has submitted a two-hundred-page proposal to open three city-run grocery stores in so-called “food deserts.” The three stores would be placed in high crime, overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods, where previous grocery stores have gone out of business due to rampant theft.
Johnson’s policy chief, Mayumi Grigsby, says grocery store closing in Black neighborhoods is part of the reason that Black people, on average, die at a younger age than Whites.
This would make Chicago the first large city in the USA to try this.
The proposal admits that each store would cost taxpayers millions to open and would need an annual subsidy to survive. It alleges that the subsidy would only be $110k-$130k per store per year. Many do not believe this and think the stores would cost taxpayers vastly more each year.
Previously, the city of Chicago gave Whole Foods $11 million in site preparation, tax breaks, and subsidies in order for them to open a grocery store in a 98% Black census tract of Englewood. The grocery store opened in 2016 and went out of business in 2022.
In 2023, a Save-A-Lot opened in Whole Foods’s former building, and Black racial activists staged protests. They claimed replacing Whole Foods with a Save-A-Lot was an insult to their community.
Why not free liquor stores? How come poor whites and Hispanics don’t get free food,too?