Tackling Food Deserts One Building at a Time
Multifamily developers are joining local governments and nonprofits to address this pervasive issue.
To address the problem of food deserts, Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development entity, issued a request for information earlier this year. They wanted qualified developers and retail grocery operators to provide local answers to a problem that impacts 23.5 million Americans: How do we get grocers to set up shop in under-served neighborhoods?
“The administration has a goal of making affordable, fresh food available within one-half mile of at least 85 percent of Atlanta residents by 2025,” said Eloisa Klementich, Invest Atlanta’s CEO.
If you’re wondering why this is a multifamily story, you’re overlooking the role housing developers can play and are playing in solving this problem.
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Food deserts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “are areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food.” They are not a new issue but one that was worsened by the pandemic. Inflation and housing scarcity have accelerated the challenge since then.
The good news is that the issue is getting attention, noted Michael Stevenson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. The institute looks at food environments with regard to access to healthy foods by considering the distance an individual lives from a grocery store or supermarket, locations for health food purchases in most communities, and the inability to access healthy food because of cost barriers.
“Local and state governments across the county are considering their local context and taking action,” Stevenson observed.
He has also seen developer-led approaches, including community gardens and farmer’s markets, along with healthy food programming and mobile produce markets hosted on site. Developers can also provide retail space to grocers selling fresh, healthy foods.
“Affordable housing developments play an important role in increasing access to healthy foods for their residents,” he added.
The City of Atlanta has 41 neighborhoods identified by the USDA as food deserts. Invest Atlanta is the lead agency for the effort to add access to fresh, nutritious food, alongside the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, the Atlanta City Council, and other partners. The city has made progress, and outreach to developers has been part of their success, Klementich said.
While they’ve been hard at work on bringing fresh food grocery stores to these underserved areas, they’re also looking at strategies beyond retail, especially with innovative models and community partners. “We understand that this is a community effort and one that needs to be addressed from multiple vantage points,” she added.
Developer approaches
Houston-based Meristem Communities has developed a new master-planned community with a farm called Indigo in Fort Bend County, Texas. Indigo will have 88 to 98 townhouses for sale by completion. The development also anticipates 60 rental apartments in its commons, with another 60 to 75 spread throughout the community in cottages and small unit buildings of six to seven units each. (When completed, Indigo will have more than 800 homes, a town center, and 42 acres of agriculture.)
Scott Snodgrass is founding partner of Meristem, and he is also a partner in the agricultural consultant firm Agmenity, which will manage the Indigo farm with the support of volunteers. Agmenity will provide opportunities for residents to farm on their own, with tools and support from its team. There will be gardening and cooking classes for residents, too, and the opportunity to buy produce grown onsite at its general store.
“We are deep believers in the power of food and view it as a fundamental pillar in our society’s collective health and well-being,” said Agmenity COO Justin Myers.
Myers is seeing increased demand across a wide spectrum of clients and models, especially in the wake of COVID, though a farm or a community garden can mean different things to different people, and the food output within each can vary significantly. “There seems to be more recent momentum throughout the industry in recognizing the unique value proposition that a farm can provide for a community, whether for rent or for sale,” Myers said.
Architects and planners at work
Mithun is one of the firms working on the development-with-food-garden concept from the architectural side. “Many multifamily neighborhoods and development plans include common open spaces that anticipate food-producing gardens because these are often seen as a community-scale rather than building-scale amenity,” observed San Francisco-based Managing Partner Anne Torney.
Often new affordable housing sites are part of a city initiative, she clarified, and while the building itself may not include a garden, these are co-located to work synergistically as holistic urban infrastructure. Casa Adelante 2060 Folsom, for example, is a new affordable housing midrise fronting a new city park and community garden. The building has ground for space for the local grassroots organization that operates the garden and related programming, Torney said.
“I’d say that food-producing gardens have been acknowledged as an amenity within residential neighborhood design and development since that time,” she commented.
LEED for Neighborhood Development, which includes a credit for spaces with food production features, was launched in 2009. “I’d say that food-producing gardens have been acknowledged as an amenity within residential neighborhood design and development since that time,” Torney noted.
Mithun has incorporated rooftop gardens within urban affordable housing projects, as well as shared community gardens as part of mixed-income, affordable and market rate housing developments.
“Our client, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. operates an active urban agriculture program across their multiple properties in San Francisco, including on the rooftop of our newest midrise for low-income families, and in at-grade community gardens,” Torney said.
Another Mithun client, San Francisco Zen Center for senior living, has been a pioneer in growing and preparing organic food, and will operate the gardens at the 275-unit Enso Village senior living community.
Mithun has also worked with the Denver Housing Authority on redevelopment master plans and healthy living initiatives for the Sun Valley and Mariposa-South Lincoln neighborhoods. “All three of these organizations recognize the importance of actively programming and operating urban gardens, rather than a passive approach that relies solely on resident interest and expertise for activation,” Torney shared.
Beware of challenges
One of the challenges of rooftop gardening, the architect notes, is waterproofing. Another is ongoing maintenance. “There is need for staffing and operational support beyond building construction and landscape establishment periods,” she commented.” On urban-infill multifamily projects, we often design garden areas to work as either food-producing plots or decorative planting, so the space doesn’t look abandoned if the garden program is not active.”
Publicly accessible community gardens, which are cropping up in both senior and family housing, are more common in suburban settings where there is greater land area for neighborhood scale amenities, Torney explained: “In master-planned communities, it’s shifted from something of a novelty 15 years ago to there being multiple examples across the country with a garden or farm as a community amenity instead of a golf course.”
She attributes the growth trend as potentially, a reflection of residents’ increased interest in “personal health, nutrition and knowing more about (or even participating in the growing of) the food they eat.” Torney also points out the social bonds created by these gardens. “Even folks who are not active gardeners enjoy the gardens as places to walk, meet up, and feel more connected to both community and healthy eating,” she shares.
Managing food amenities
From an operational perspective, the food-producing garden will almost always be more expensive because it needs to be actively managed and requires more time, energy, and ongoing resources (seeds, plants, compost, fertilizer, etc.), Myers observed.
“However, it is a ‘productive’ space that is generating food with an objective financial value as well as numerous other intangible human and social benefits, which can help offset some of the expenses or at least soften how its costs are defined,” he added.
Developers and their partners and funders should ask themselves these questions, he posited: How will these will be funded over time? who is going to maintain the farm/garden? How is the community going to be involved, engaged, and adding value to the farm or garden as a resource for all? And how do you ensure that the space looks beautiful and does not become an eyesore.
“While food-producing gardens and farms can be challenging amenities to manage that require both financial and human investment, they provide a transformational platform for residents to engage, connect, learn, and grow as individuals as well as a larger community,” Myers remarked.
Jamie Gold, CKD, CAPS, MCCWC is a Forbes.com contributor, wellness design consultant, industry speaker, and award-winning author of Wellness by Design (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
