PITTSBURGH (PTTP) – Oakland is one of the major neighborhoods in the City of Pittsburgh and houses the University of Pittsburgh, but it has one key description that is uncommon for a neighborhood of its size – food desert.
What does that mean? According to the United States Department of Agriculture, a food desert is an area that has limited access to affordable and healthy foods, often leading to food insecurity among the population.
There are two keywords in that definition. The first is affordable and the second is access. For Oakland, there is no afford large supermarket that can serve the entire community. In terms of access, the closest supermarket is Giant Eagle, over a mile away in South Side, while Target in East Liberty is over two miles away. Those are hardly walkable for a college campus that requires a lot of walking.
“There’s nothing that’s super convenient,” student Ari Meyer said. “You can only carry back so much food on the bus. So, it is pretty hard to get food in bulk. There is no supermarket nearby or an easy way to get it back to your dorm if you do not have a car.”
So, Forbes Street Market entered the picture in 2018 to try and rectify this problem. However, for many students, it does not check off the first adjective in that frame – affordable. The inflating prices at Forbes Street Market have grown to become a problem.
“There’s food insecurity if you have money insecurity,” student Kayla Pattison said. “Forbes Street Market is very convenient but if you don’t have the meal swap for the day or your dining dollars, it’s overpriced to purchase goods. Often, I find myself going to Rite Aid or CVS to get groceries.”
As of now, there are no plans in the city’s greater ‘Oakland Plan’ to add a mass supermarket. It plans to add transportation infrastructure, new community developments, and affordable housing, but no grocery store is yet on the list.
A problem for students and residents alike, Oakland residents are part of the 50 percent of people that live in food deserts according to the City of Pittsburgh’s study into food deserts in 2021. Until an affordable place with access is put in, food insecurity could continue to be a scourge in the community.