Where you live affects how you live.  In the face of rising obesity rates and the specter of a diabetes epidemic, policymakers and the public are realizing that nutrition education and individual diet are only one piece of the puzzle.  Access to fresh foods plays a major role in healthy living. Families can't choose fresh fruits and vegetables if those healthy foods aren't conveniently available in their own communities. 

More than two dozen leading food advocates and private sector supporters met at an April 13 PolicyLink breakfast roundtable in New York to discuss strategies for improving healthy food access in low-income and underserved neighborhoods.  "We're almost at the proverbial tipping point in this discussion," said Duane Perry, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Food Trust, one of the event's featured speakers.  The roundtable, hosted by the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, sought to highlight some of the successes—and challenges—of ensuring healthy food for everyone.  Rich Savner, director of public relations and government affairs for Pathmark, reminded advocates that profitability is vital to making any new supermarket investment or store improvement viable.  The store Pathmark opened in Harlem in 1999 (with the help of local and national community development partners) has served as a model for how major retailers can make a profit in low-income urban markets.

But Savner warned that advocates need to recognize just how tight supermarket profit margins are before pitching a retailer to sink millions of dollars into a new, underserved location.  "When you make a mistake when you're working within a 1 to 2 percent profit margin…you may be out of business or at least reluctant to take that risk again," he said.  G. Lamont Blackstone, who played a key role in the Harlem Pathmark project, also spoke to the development challenges of attracting retail investment to urban markets.    

Despite these complexities, the healthy food access movement is gaining momentum in the public as well as the private sector. Just this year, New York City appointed Benjamin Thomases to the newly-created position of food policy coordinator. "The obesity epidemic is clearly pushing public officials to look much harder at all these issues," Thomases said.

Advocates, policy experts and private sector leaders agreed that public policy must play a more direct role in guiding and encouraging the construction of new supermarkets and the expansion of corner store fruits and vegetables selection.  One model policy is Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Financing Initiative, which leverages state funds, New Markets Tax Credits, and private dollars to build new supermarkets and improve existing stores in the state's underserved communities. California is now considering similar legislation, Senate Bill 107, to provide incentives for new supermarkets and more fresh foods in existing stores and farmers markets.  "There is a groundswell that's beginning to happen and could really bubble up," said PolicyLink Associate Director Rebecca Flournoy, the organization's leader on the SB 107 legislation.  Michael Levine, president of The Retail Initiative (created by LISC), said state and federal governments should look to leverage public dollars—through grants or tax incentives—to convince retailers to locate in neighborhoods considered to be a riskier investment.  "There is a need for public subsidies, just like in low-income housing," Levine said. 

The idea of federal tax incentives was met with broad interest in the group. The Food Trust's Perry agreed that public dollars should be used for business and retail incentives. 

"I think we've got the wrong target," he said. "As a nonprofit person, as much as I'd like a grant, the grants and loans need to go to the industry here."  The depth of the discussion showed just how the healthy food access movement has matured. The debate is no longer about how to get people to realize the importance of access to fresh foods, but rather how to channel advocacy, public policy and private dollars into concrete solutions.  PolicyLink CEO and panel moderator Angela Glover Blackwell ended the rousing discussion by looking optimistically toward the future—in particular to growing Congressional awareness of food access issues.  "We have a federal moment," she said. "It is time to take advantage of it. I'm hopeful in a number of arenas. I really am."

PolicyLink founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell joined Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. Charles Rangel on April 25 to announce a new report, "From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half," which highlights a dozen federal policy changes—including harnessing tax breaks and increasing the minimum wage—to significantly improve the lives of millions of poor Americans.  Blackwell and Peter B. Edelman, professor of law at Georgetown University, co-chair the Task Force on Poverty, a project of the Center for American Progress.

Noting that one in eight Americans lives in poverty and income inequality is at its highest since 1929, the task force proposed four guiding principles for addressing poverty—promote decent work, provide opportunity for all, ensure economic security, and help people build wealth—and 12 specific steps to cut poverty in half over the next 10 years.  The report's release was covered in numerous media outlets (including the Washington Post and public radio's Marketplace), and will serve as a catalyst for future research and advocacy.     

The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), a Chicago-based organization that works on housing, transportation, community building, and urban development is calling on colleagues and legislators across the nation to support the Housing America's Workforce Act now in Congress.  The legislation proposes a 50-cent federal tax credit on every dollar a business invests in employer assisted housing (EAH); the bill also provides for down payment and rental assistance and housing counseling nationwide, and encourages community reinvestment. In order to ensure the program's sustenance, the act offers initial financial support to nonprofit agencies that administer EAH programs and assist employers by providing housing counseling to participating workers. 

This legislation is modeled after the successful Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credit, which has made it possible for over 1000 employees of participating companies to buy homes since 2000.  MPC and its partners in Regional Employer Assisted Collaboration for Housing (REACH) Illinois, work to make it simple for employers to offer EAH programs, through home ownership education and management services. 

Encourage your legislators to support the Housing America's Workforce Act by personalizing and sending the sample letter provided by MPC. Advocates nationwide are striving to improve housing options near jobs, transit, retail, and good schools; the federal legislation will help replicate Illinois' success and put affordable housing within reach of millions of workers. 

While the past decade brought a much-publicized renaissance to places like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, many American cities—particularly older, formerly industrial centers in the northeast and Midwest—continue to struggle with population loss, a shrinking job base, and economic stagnation.  Several of the nation's leading policy, equity, smart growth, and housing organizations have joined together in the Restoring Prosperity Initiative to remind elected officials, nonprofit leaders, and the business community that these cities "were once economic, political, and cultural hubs and the engines of America's economic growth"—and can be again.

The Restoring Prosperity Initiative—a partnership of PolicyLink, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, Smart Growth America, the National Housing Institute, the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, and the Northeast-Midwest Institute—will use research, communications, and advocacy to advance state and local policy and economic development strategies to revitalize America's older core cities.  As part of this effort, the Brookings Institution recently released Restoring Prosperity:  The State Role in Revitalizing America's Older Industrial Cities, a research brief that highlights the crucial role of governors, legislators, and other state leaders in addressing the challenges of struggling cities.  For more information about the Restoring Prosperity Initiative, including related publications and upcoming events, visit http://www.restoringprosperity.org/.        

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast and scattered displaced residents to Baton Rouge, Houston, Atlanta, and even more distant places.  Nearly two years later, thousands are still struggling to rebuild their lives.  Now, advocates and community groups in New Orleans, statewide, and across the country have formed a coalition to connect displaced Louisiana residents throughout the diaspora and push for the information, policies, and resources these disaster survivors need to either return home or settle permanently in their new communities.

The Louisiana Diaspora Advocacy Project (LA DAP) will use grassroots organizing, e-advocacy, and lobbying to ensure the needs of displaced residents are fairly addressed by the state of Louisiana and Congress.  On May 15, LA DAP gathered 400 people to a rally at the capitol in Baton Rouge—including displaced residents transported from Houston and New Orleans—to lobby state officials on affordable housing, voting rights, workforce development, and other policy priorities.  Displaced residents outside Baton Rouge could also join a “virtual” march by submitting their statements of support online.  LA DAP will continue to work to ensure that all Louisiana residents throughout the diaspora have a voice in the Gulf Coast rebuilding process.

For more information about LA DAP and the coalition’s policy agenda, visit http://www.nola.tv/news/250.html. 

Since the passage of Montgomery County, Maryland's Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program in 1976, affordable housing advocates have looked to inclusionary zoning (IZ) as a key strategy to create homeownership and rental opportunities for low- and moderate-income residents.  Communities across America have implemented IZ—a policy which requires or encourages developers to construct affordable units in exchange for density bonuses or other zoning variances—and the IZ movement continues to gain momentum:

• The Chicago City Council recently approved an inclusionary housing plan; advocates were encouraged by this victory, but also pledged to monitor implementation and push for greater affordability provisions.   

• Key changes to Boston's IZ measure, the Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP), will help achieve even deeper levels of housing affordability.  Though the IDP was enacted in 2000, many of the units it created remained unaffordable to lower-income city residents.  Boston initially based IDP eligibility requirements on area median income (AMI), a figure that took into account median incomes across 142 cities and towns in the greater metropolitan area and was skewed significantly higher than the median household income in the central city itself.  After research and recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC), and advocacy from the Boston Tenant Coalition and its allies, the city passed IDP reforms—including using Boston city median income instead of AMI to determine eligibility—that will increase low- and very low-income families' access to affordable housing.  (The Boston Tenant Coalition and MACDC are members of Action for Regional Equity, a diverse coalition of organizations united to address continuing disparities in affordable housing, transportation investment, and environmental justice in greater Boston and statewide.)

• PolicyLink associate director Radhika Fox tells the story of a Washington, DC, coalition's winning campaign for inclusionary zoning in the Spring 2007 issue of Shelterforce magazine.  
• PolicyLink, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, the Innovative Housing Institute, the National Housing Conference, and the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California will host "Building Strong Mixed-Income Communities," a national inclusionary housing conference from October 31-November 1 in San Francisco.  For details and online registration, visit http://www.inhousing.org/conf/. 

To learn more about the basics of inclusionary zoning, visit the PolicyLink Equitable Development Toolkit.  To join the discussion about IZ advocacy, implementation, and administration, sign up for the PolicyLink inclusionary zoning listserv.