Gillibrand pushes legislation to lure grocery stores to ‘food deserts’

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says her office has spent years trying to talk supermarket chains into locating on Buffalo’s East Side and other low-income communities in New York State, to no avail.

Now she wants to offer them financial incentives to do it.

“Some grocery store chains only want to be in wealthy communities because they want people to spend a lot of money in their stores,” Gillibrand told a gathering at Buffalo’s Delavan Grider Community Center on Friday. “They don’t think it’s economical to locate in lower-income areas, so we need to give them money to get them to come here.”

Gillibrand wants money for that purpose to come from legislation called the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which provided funding in the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills to bring more healthy food access to underserved communities across the country.

The legislation expired last year, and Gillibrand has proposed a reauthorization act that would revive it and increase its funding from $25 million to $50 million a year, she said.

The initiative provides loan and grant financing to attract grocery stores and other fresh food retailers to underserved areas, as well as to renovate and expand existing stores so they can provide the healthy foods communities want and need, Gillibrand said.