After days of freezing rain fell over the Mid-South, Yolanda Lee, 49, carefully descended the ice covered steps of her downtown home near Booker T. Washington High School. Many Memphians try to stock up before a forecast of frigid weather, but Lee’s limited funds only allow her to buy a little food at a time.
Stopping at the sidewalk, she looked down the street for her neighbor’s car.
“He’ll give anyone in the neighborhood a ride to the store,” Lee said. “He’ll wait outside (the supermarket) and drive you back to your house. He charges $4 or $5. That’s his hustle.”
His car isn’t parked outside his home, which means Lee will have to figure out a different way to get the groceries she needs.
She could walk to the closest supermarket, a Save-A-Lot on Bellevue Boulevard, but it’s a two-mile, 40-minute, one-way hike in below-freezing temperatures. Taking the bus would be an option, if time were not a factor. Lee’s cousin said she would watch her three children while she went to the store, but that only gives Lee an hour or so.
“He’ll give anyone in the neighborhood a ride to the store… He charges $4 or $5 dollars. That’s his hustle.”
Finally, Lee could search for the foods she needs in one of the convenience stores in her neighborhood, where prices are high and fresh produce options slim.
Lee’s situation isn’t unique. Some 20 percent of Memphian’s live in official “food deserts.” These urban ecosystems are now the focus of research at the University of Memphis’s Department of Sociology. Brittany K. Campagna, a graduate student, has spent the last year holding focus groups with people who live in the city’s produce-free neighborhoods. Although study’s findings are not out yet, she said two themes were repeatedly mentioned.
“My respondents were almost always thinking about what they can afford and what won’t spoil,” Campagna said. “While cost is why they go through all the trouble of getting to a supermarket, they are also figuring out what foods will work for the walk back home. Especially during July and August, in Memphis, heat becomes a big factor in determining whether they are buying cheese or milk.”
The Convenience Trap
In Lee’s neighborhood, there are a dozen stores advertising “milk,” “bread” and “beer” through LED-lighted, iron-barred windows– all within a half mile of her home, two in her same city block.
Yet Lee refuses to do business with these merchants.
“You can buy two (gallons of) milks for the same price they charge over here just for one,” she said. “They are too high– too high. It’s about two times higher than what you can get at a real grocery store –at the Save-A-Lot. They don’t have vegetables or anything you want.”
What these stores lack in produce and competitive prices they make up with junk food and wide alcohol selections. The Salem Market and Friendly Food Mart just around the corner from Lee sell a gallon of milk for $4.99 and $4.69, while the “real grocery store” two miles away sells it for $3.39.
As the wind picked up, Lee pulled the hood of her jacket over her knit cap. “I’d only buy from them if it were an emergency – only if I could do no better.”
Convenient stores are littered throughout poverty-stricken communities across Memphis while supermarkets, with nutritional foods at lower prices, are often out of reach.
Food deserts fill massive swaths of the city. Forty areas in Shelby County are dubbed food deserts – which are census tracts with high poverty where the people have little to no access to a supermarket –nearly all of them are within city limits.
While Lee’s tract is not technically a food desert, it’s not much better. Nearly 65 percent live below the poverty line and about 41 percent of the households do not have cars. Many neighborhood residents have to find alternative ways to get to a grocery store or buy at the more expensive convenience stores.
“I’d only buy from them if it were an emergency—only if I could do no better.”
In researching how the poor navigate Memphis’s food deserts, Campagna said her respondents often tell her, they needed to catch multiple busses or car pool to a grocery store together. Some who walk had to get creative, she explained.
“This one lady would walk two miles to a grocery store with empty luggage,” Campagna said. “She’d put them under her grocery cart while she shopped. After she checked out, she’d pop open her luggage, threw all her groceries inside and carried cases back.”
While many will jump hurdles to get the foods they need, some survive on whatever they can find at the corner stores.
“We see fast-food restaurants, convenient stores and liquor stores all over these neighborhoods,” Campagna said. “Some of my respondents said they get things like cold cuts, tiny pizzas, snacks, chips and cookies. They might be able to get some kind of juice but it’s usually Jungle Juice.”
Neighborhoods with limited access to supermarkets tend to have higher rates of obesity. Limited access to food affects minorities more than whites in Memphis.
Looking at a large fold out paper map of Memphis, Campagna moves her finger across South Memphis to downtown closest to the river and stops in Raleigh. “The food deserts stop just before you get to Bartlett. It’s this ‘C’—the predominantly black neighborhoods.”
While many credit Memphis as one of the one of the most charitable cities in the South – 14.8 million pounds of food and $3.7 million dollars were donated to Mid-South Food Bank in 2014 –food banks and charity are not enough.
“Food drives are great but they are not a solution to food deserts,” Campagna said. “Solving this problem requires reinvestment into the black and poor communities.”
