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Food Policy Council highlights Sun Bucks pilot, urges targeted action to address food access east of Anacostia
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Summary
At the same Jan. 29 hearing, the Food Policy Council and community groups described the first year of Summer EBT in D.C. (Sun Bucks), urged changes to food policy and investments to tackle what witnesses described as ‘‘food apartheid’’ in Wards 7 and 8, and asked for sustained resources for nutrition incentive programs and urban agriculture.
The Committee on Health heard public testimony Jan. 29 about the District’s Food Policy Council, the first year of the federal Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer pilot (Sun Bucks), and a range of local food‑access programs and proposals to increase grocery access east of the Anacostia River.
Caroline Howe, food policy director at the Office of Planning and liaison to the Food Policy Council, told the committee the council and agency partners helped implement Sun Bucks in FY24, which brought ‘‘over $7,000,000 federal dollars to give $120 each to 58,000 children in the District’’ and additional administrative funds to help get benefits to families over the summer. Howe said the program was paired with the district’s ongoing summer meals program and that the food policy team developed a customer service portal, supported six community outreach grants and trained community organizations to help families apply.
Witnesses described gaps that remain. Jaren Hill Lockridge of Dreaming Out Loud urged the committee to stop using the term ‘‘food desert’’ and instead called the situation ‘‘food apartheid,’’ arguing that policy choices and systemic inequities—not chance—have shaped where grocery stores and full‑service markets operate. Lockridge and other speakers raised the supermarket tax‑credit incentive as an example that, they said, has primarily benefited neighborhoods west of the river.
Howe said that while the district recorded 20 new grocery stores in the past five years, none (or very few) opened east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, and that grocery openings have not meaningfully closed access gaps in those neighborhoods. The council’s work emphasizes pairing land‑use planning, transit connections and fiscal incentives so people can ‘‘get to food and food to people’’—for example by studying transit access for grocery shopping, integrating food objectives into small‑area plans, and exploring municipal or district‑owned space that could be leased to grocers or food businesses.
Howe highlighted several programmatic efforts: the elderly simplified SNAP application (ESAP) to ease access for seniors and people with disabilities; the continued expansion of produce‑incentive programs and Healthy Corner Store work; Nourish DC and a ‘‘Keeping It Cool’’ cold‑storage grant that has helped food businesses reduce waste and comply with local food‑waste diversion rules; and the urban agriculture infrastructure grant, which has more applicants than funding.
Sun Bucks roll‑out: Howe and DHS officials described mixed operational results. Of an estimated 80,000 eligible students, 40,000 were ‘‘pre‑approved’’ via SNAP enrollment and were issued cards automatically; another cohort needed extra paperwork. Howe said 14,699 applications were submitted for roughly 27,262 students and 39,000 approvals were recorded; the program faced address‑verification and card‑activation problems in some cases, which the district plans to address by loading future Sun Bucks onto existing SNAP cards where feasible.
On grocery development, Howe said the council is studying multiple approaches: targeted small‑format grocery incentives, technical assistance and cold‑storage grants for corner stores, municipal space leasing models, and stronger transit links to full‑service grocers. She cited Indianapolis as a model for pairing technical assistance with cold‑storage grants to help corner stores sell more minimally processed foods.
Several council members pressed for more granular data and for firm plans to expand grocer access in wards with the greatest need. Councilmember Christina Henderson and others said transit connections and retailer business models must be factored into any plan, and urged the Food Policy Council and OP to push agencies to convert plans into tangible investments and site‑level commitments.
Ending: The council asked for follow‑up reports and the Food Policy Office said it will publish targeted studies (including a report on food insecurity among college students due in April) and continue coordinating cross‑agency planning and federal grant work for infrastructure and business support.
