Highland Park is a food-medicine desert.

"This just made his life increasingly more difficult and dire."

It's a strange, dizzying time for Highland Park and the 37404 zip code that stretches down Dodds Ave., across the foot of Missionary Ridge, onto the lively Main Street.

Some 13,000 Chattanoogans live there, with all the aging pains of generational poverty next door to the growing pains of massive gentrification; homes at risk of drive-by's are just blocks away from $700,000, three-bed, three-bath charmers.

It's vibrant and historic: St. Andrew's Center, Highland Park Commons, both major hospitals, both major charter schools.

Yet, there's no grocery store.

No pharmacy, either.

In February, Walgreen's made a bitter announcement: it would close its McCallie Ave. store.

Walgreen's exit leaves, as the Times Free Press acutely reported, "the Glenwood, Highland Park and East Chattanooga areas near Chattanooga's biggest hospitals without a free-standing drug store in their neighborhoods."

Then, last month, the Food City on East 23rd St. closed its doors.

The neighborhoods have become a food-medicine desert.

Where do thousands of car-less Chattanoogans go for sliced bread, mustard, antibiotics, ground beef, bananas, milk, cough syrup, cherries or butter?

Or heart medication, cereal, baby aspirin, Folgers?

Or Omeprazole, rice, vitamins or cholesterol medicine?

Sure, they could go to the new Food City, recently opened on Broad Street, near the Chattanoogan hotel.

It's exactly 2.2 miles from the new Food City to the old one. Or, it's another 2.6 miles to the East Ridge Food City on Ringgold Road.

Driving? Should take about 10 minutes, one-way.

But on a bike?

Or on foot?

"It will take hours," said Nathan Williams, pastor of the nearby New Life Seventh Day Adventist church.

How many plastic bags of food can you carry while riding a bike? How long before meat spoils? Or milk goes bad? How many bags will taxis allow as carry-ons?

Can you carry enough food for a week while walking the two or three miles home?

"And in this heat?" Williams said.

There's been a grocery store in that East 23rd Street space for years; first, Red Food, then Bi-Lo, then Food City.

Now, it's empty, ghostly, like the movie scenes after aliens land. Some folks are still milling about, as if waiting for Godot or groceries. One recent afternoon, country music was playing over the loudspeakers outside; another afternoon, mockingly, tauntingly, the chipper Jason Mraz sang:

I pack my bags, I'm going away
I'm only leaving for a day
It's nice to have some time alone
And it's nice to know how I miss home
I wrote this song to let you know

I'm better with you
I'm better with you

"As I interact with various individuals in the community, there seems to be a growing distrust for Chattanooga policy and lawmakers," Pastor Williams said.

Last Thursday, a group of 30 or so met inside the New Life fellowship hall to discuss how to bolster the increasingly vulnerable neighborhoods around them.

"Many of the residents feel neglected and have a 'Here we go again' approach to how their community is being treated," said Williams.

The meeting was organized by the Chattanooga Food Policy Coalition. In attendance? Community members, neighborhood organizations, multiple nonprofits, Chattanooga Area Food Bank, Gaining Ground Grocery and elected officials and candidates.

"The things they provide in stores are pre-packaged, high in sodium and high in sugar," said District 8 Councilwoman Marvene Noel. This community, she said, already suffers from a diet bloated by poverty and lack of access.

"Hypertension, diabetes, asthma, overweight," she said.

According to the Chattanooga Food Policy Coalition:

• Food insecurity rates are higher in the zip codes surrounding the now-closed Food City than Hamilton County's rate, which stands at 13.4%. Zip codes near the former Food City include 37407, with a food insecurity rate of 30%, and 37401, with a rate of 26%.
• Food insecurity rates increased nearly 3% from 2021 to 2022.
• Black and Hispanic residents in Hamilton County suffer from a food insecurity rate that's more than double for white, non-Hispanics.

Present help – the YMCA's Mobile Market, CARTA's Care-a-Van and ride-share service, the unending, life-saving work of the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, the gloriously good Gaining Ground Grocery, United Way's 211 – was identified.

Solutions discussed.

Without the Food City, residents now rely on dollar stores, church pantries, gas stations, bodegas.

"Our food pantry is regularly depleted," said one woman with New City Fellowship.

The new Food City may only be two miles away, but it feels worlds apart. "It serves a different demographic," many said at the meeting, a polite, coded way of saying: it's a richer, whiter store and we feel lost and out-of-place.

Chronic hunger is a slow burn; headlines shift our attention elsewhere, but today, tomorrow, yesterday, the ache and fear of daily hunger remains grindingly entrenched.

"Any given day, we know that 170,000 of our neighbors may not know where their next meal is coming from," Melissa Blevins, CEO of the Chattanooga Area Food Bank told us last fall.

Why do relocating baseball stadiums get more headlines than this?

"The best thing a reader or citizen can do is engage with their community," said Katy Neusner, Community Impact Manager with the Food Bank and co-chair of the Chattanooga Food Policy Coalition. "Start conversations about what is happening to you, your neighbors, your colleagues and on behalf of those who haven’t been given a voice."

(A full-length interview with Katy can be found at the end today's story.)

Here's another solution.

According to Zillow, there are some 80 homes for sale within 37404.

Some for $500,000. Very few under $300,000. One for $850,000. Another priced at $1.3 million.

But there's no pharmacy or grocery store nearby?

We need developers and real estate firms to join the struggle. If this zip code is so attractive for developers – from here to Nashville and beyond – then why don't they throw their weight around?

Do potential home-owners and buyers know there's no grocery store or Walgreens?

Mayor Tim Kelly said the East 23rd Street site is scheduled for "a significant housing development," according to the Times Free Press. Again, the irony: how can developers continue to build and sell housing when there's no grocery store?

"If we have enough rooftops for Dollar General, then we have enough rooftops for a grocery store," said Williams.

Exactly. If hungry residents carrying plastic bags of groceries halfway up their arms and elbows can't get political or economic attention, then perhaps developers and real estate agents can.

"Removing a business out of the community always reduces the amount of taxes that businesses contribute which helps provide resources for our schools, balance property taxes as well as taking care of the local community needs," Williams said.

"In the long run, a food desert always results in increased health disparities for those who are unable to obtain fresh fruits and vegetables. Even purchasing medications can become more difficult because of the distance to pick up one’s medications," he continued.

"I believe that if we take care of this need in the front end, we can save ourselves unnecessary health cost on the back end."

As part of his pastoral work, Williams cares for an elderly man suffering from a terminal illness. Before, going to Food City was wearying, but possible.

Now?

"It takes an extended amount of energy for the patient to travel in general but to travel even further with a terminal illness is draining and exhausting," Williams said. "This just made his life increasingly more difficult and dire."

Interview with Katy Neusner, Community Impact Manager with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank and co-chair of the Chattanooga Food Policy Coalition. (You can connect with the coalition on Facebook or Instagram.)

What are specific things readers and citizens can do to help?

The best thing a reader or citizen can do is engage with their community. Start conversations about what is happening to you, your neighbors, your colleagues and on behalf of those who haven’t been given a voice.

Attend neighborhood association meetings, city council meetings, and public discussion forums. Join the Chattanooga Food Coalition’s email list. Connect with the wonderful folks at the Chattanooga Food Forest Coalition, or volunteer with your favorite nonprofit organization. If you can’t attend a meeting, participate in local surveys. The city, the county, and any organization worth their salt want your feedback. Speak up and be heard!

I challenge readers to visit a grocery store they haven’t been to before. We need to support businesses that we want to remain in our area by voting with our dollars. Check out your local tienda or the locally-owned grocery store in a different part of town.

How does this get solved? What are immediate and long-term solutions and the paths to get there?

The million-dollar question! There isn’t one straightforward way to prevent grocery stores from closing in historically underserved communities. Businesses, especially national chains, will make decisions that they decide are good for their bottom line.

Change can be made both top-down through government policy and bottom-up by the community. Most food-related policies are set at the national and state levels, so convening food system advocates at those levels is crucial. The TN Department of Health is working to convene a statewide food coalition, which we have been involved in and are excited about.

The coalition surveyed our members this past fall, and the #1 priority was loud and clear: the creation and follow-through of a regional food plan that is supported by government bodies and developed with community engagement. Many states, counties, and cities already have food plans; we wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel. Another big idea I’d like to explore further is tax incentives for grocers to stay in areas with high rates of food and/or nutrition insecurity, similar to what has been done in Michigan and DC.

Bottom-up solutions include what we’ve already talked about: voting with your dollar, and participating in community outreach efforts. Preserving the assets we already have is a lot easier than starting something new.

Here are some additional potential solutions proposed during the meeting:

• Support the Chattanooga Community Co-Op group, which is working to launch a community-owned grocery store run by its workers and members.
• Address cultural barriers discussed during the meeting. CNE has hosted ‘tienda tours’ to make tiendas more approachable to those who don’t frequent them, and following last week’s meeting, they have offered to host two in September.
• Reduce reliance on grocery stores by improving access to and supporting community gardens.
• Improve public transportation options, explore ride-share programs, and develop and maintain safe bike lanes and sidewalks to address transportation barriers.
• Provide Food RX boxes for those with chronic health conditions.
• Reassess zoning laws.
• Offer education for grocery store personnel.
• Support local grocers by hosting community events at their locations, such as e-waste donation drives and radio station-hosted events, to attract customers.

We were absolutely inspired by the turnout! We had a great mix of community members who had been impacted by the closure, folks representing a wide range of organizations, and people in positions of influence within the area. The attendees were engaged, and we had a great conversation. I hope everyone who attended feels that their voice was heard. For those who were unable to attend or prefer to provide their thoughts more privately, we invite everyone to fill out this brief form: Food City Closure Feedback Form.

One point of conversation that stood out to me is that shopping in a grocery store is about much more than just being able to physically get to the store. Some residents do not feel like they ‘belong’ in the new Food City because it feels so different from the old one. The upscale amenities cater to the wealthier population downtown, and people expressed feeling overwhelmed while shopping there. Where is the comfort they once knew on East 23rd?

On the other side of the coin, some residents, ostensibly those who are used to the shininess of Publix or Whole Foods, are nervous about going into a tienda, fearing that there may be a language barrier, that they will feel out of place, or that they won’t accept credit cards. These cultural barriers are just as important to acknowledge and address as physical and economic barriers.

Here are some other highlights from the meeting:

• Participants noted the lack of pharmacies in the area, which was impacted by the closure of Food City and Walgreens at 2104 McCallie Ave in February. Not only have these changes affected access to food, but access to medicine as well, both of which contribute to poor health outcomes.
• Transportation by foot is difficult, especially in summer and winter. Sidewalks are mostly unshaded, difficult to navigate, and often end abruptly.
• Lack of access to fresh food continues to plague low-income and minority communities in Chattanooga.
• In general, the group emphasized the need for alternatives to large-scale grocers, like tiendas (where produce is very affordable), corner stores and dollar stores that offer fresh produce and healthy options. The coalition hopes to address cultural and language barriers to these options.
• The meeting lacked input from the Latino and Hispanic communities. As this work progresses, the coalition will work to ensure participation from all populations.