COLUMBIA, S.C. — On Tuesday, the Columbia City Council approved $300,000 to go to the Food Insecurities Solutions Initiative. This money will be allocated to one - or multiple - projects with the goal of bringing food into neighborhoods.
Columbia resident Jonah Litham has to travel between four and six miles to his nearest grocery store. Sometimes he has a car, but other times he has to rely on rideshare services like Uber. This means he often has to rely on fast food for meals.
"I wish personally that I could go grocery shopping because I love to cook everything from scratch," Litham shared. "Being at home where, you know, the food is the closest thing to the heart. I enjoy cooking."
But lack of access to a nearby grocery store makes that hard. Councilwoman Tina Herbert hopes to fix that now that the money has been approved.
"I’m really excited because we’ve been waiting for it for a while," Herbert said.
She worked with the Food Policy Committee to research possible solutions, including a mobile market that could bring food into communities. Now that the group has the money, it will soon start accepting suggestions for different projects from the community.
"Our goal would be to see either one item or several things that are up and running before the end of next year," Herbert said.
The procurement process for this is set to begin in December, Herbert hopes. She says residents will have 45-60 days to submit their ideas for projects that can help fight food insecurity locally.
"This is a temporary solution," Herbert shared. "We definitely need grocery stores because we’ve lost so many, however, in order for us to become competitive in our areas, we really need to build density."
Herbert is hoping to build this density by supporting the community with temporary food options, like a mobile market.
"We decided not to just do a mobile market because maybe there’s some other options out there. That is our preference because we’ve looked at it and we’ve researched it and we know it’s effective, but we’re also giving the community the opportunity to make any other suggestions," she explained. "So if there’s a business owner or someone who has another concept that they think would be good, we’re accepting those too."
To Litham, the idea of a mobile market sounds like a good solution.
"That sounds like a great idea," he said. "Like, that’s gonna bring a very much, a huge impact of convenience and just you know overall comfortability with the residents staying local and nearby."
This comes after grocery stores in the zip codes 29203 and 29204 have closed. Diane Green has lived here her whole life.
"We had a store right down the street and it closed down, so that made it…it was real convenient for people in this area, but I hate it closed because I used to go there myself and they had great deals," Green explained. "So the only grocery store now we have to deal with is going to the Dollar General which is around the corner, so people walk to the Dollar General to get a few items, but the Food Lion is the only closest place around."
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Green tells me she has a car, so she’s able to drive to get what she needs. Columbia resident Donnie Davis doesn’t have access to transportation, however, so he says finding affordable options is hard.
"When they say food deserts, that’s real...It's just really weird that it’s here," Davis told me. "First of all you have to find [a grocery store]. It’s hard to find. They have Dollar Generals everywhere and the price just went up from a dollar to $1.25 at every Dollar General."
But a Dollar General doesn't have the fresh produce he's looking for.
"Having a place to go to get perishables like vegetables and fruit, stuff that we really need," he started. "You’ve gotta get stuff in plastic and processed and stuff like that at these types of places."
Columbia resident Sonya Johnson has recognized this need, so she’s decided to re-open Baxley’s: a grocery store that her grandfather started in 1929.
"I do want to see the store come back as a third generation to the business. It is a need in the community definitely," Johnson said. "I do see, I have heard and have witnessed [the need], and so that’s why we do want to bring the store back. It will still have the same purpose that my grandfather had and my father had, which is a meat market. Everything was cut fresh."