\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got Slim Jims?\u201d New York City is talking about groceries \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s very expensive to shop at a local supermarket.\u201d \u201cAnything you buy is high.\u201d \u2014 8.9 percent higher over the last year, to be exact if you like eggs, meat, poultry and fish. And over 5 percent if you like dairy. \u201cWe\u2019re a family of six. The trip here used to cost me like $40. Now it\u2019s like at $97.\u201d \u201cThe fruits and everything is so expensive.\u201d The prices and the discontent are why Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner and Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has made addressing grocery prices a key part of his platform. \u201cGrocery prices are out of control. As mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores.\u201d \u201cGrocery stores.\u201d \u201cGrocery stores.\u201d \u201cCity-owned grocery stores.\u201d But the proposal has attracted some criticism from the private grocery industry and from Mamdani\u2019s fellow mayoral candidates. \u201cIt\u2019s going to dismantle our independent supermarkets, our bodegas. When you start dismantling and having government displace workers, now you\u2019re feeding the problem.\u201d \u201cWhy would you subsidize rich peoples\u2019 purchase of food? Why would you do that? Well, that\u2019s the socialist ideology.\u201d A poll of New Yorkers showed that 66 percent of people supported the idea of government-run grocery stores. But this idea of the government intervening in the grocery sector isn\u2019t actually as novel as some New Yorkers may think. \u201cThe government already has a lot of control over the food system right now. Whether your children go to public school, whether you\u2019re on SNAP benefits, whether you shop at a military commissary exchange program, the government is already involved in the food system.\u201d \u201cNew York\u2019s many national origins have enriched the city with a world of variety in foods.\u201d Since the 1930s, the city government has also used public property to rent to private grocers at below market value. The idea for the markets was first floated by Mayor LaGuardia during the Great Depression to combat high grocery prices, and also to clean up the streets by forcing pushcarts indoors. \u201cWe have six public markets right now that the city owns or is the landlord through the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Many people don\u2019t know that \u2014 Arthur Avenue is one, Essex Market on the Lower East Side. Viva Frutas is a small grocery store inside Essex Market. It\u2019s been around for over 20 years, and is an example of one of those decadeslong government initiatives to keep food prices low. \u201cWe have a great rate for our rent here. It\u2019s affordable. So that\u2019s why we\u2019re able to be in this place, and keep our prices a little bit lower. My clientele are mainly low-income families, people that have benefits from the government.\u201d \u201cWould a store like this be able to exist just across the street, but renting from a private owner?\u201d \u201cNo, there\u2019s no way.\u201d \u201cAnd why not?\u201d Because the rent is too high in this neighborhood.\u201d \u201cWe live in Chelsea. We come down here.\u201d \u201cWhy do you come all the way down here?\u201d \u201cThe prices are cheaper.\u201d \u201cZohran Mamdani, one of the mayoral candidates, has proposed potentially putting a government-run grocery store in each borough so that he can keep prices low. I\u2019m curious what you think about that?\u201d \u201cI think it would be great. It\u2019s very expensive to shop at a local supermarket. It would help a lot of people that don\u2019t make a lot of money.\u201d Jose Dario is from the Dominican Republic, has owned bodegas here in New York City since 1994. He worries a government store opening nearby would ultimately put him out of business. Private businesses, both big and small, have come out against Mamdani\u2019s idea due to this exact concern. But at the scale he\u2019s currently proposing \u2014 \u201cOne in each borough, so five in total, would cost the city $60 million.\u201d Experts like Cather say the plan wouldn\u2019t be very effective. \u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about just five grocery stores, that\u2019s not enough to really drive the price down. I think New Yorkers access food in so many ways. I just don\u2019t see that level of threat for the private grocery stores. Something more like 20 across the city, that would maybe make a meaningful impact.\u201d It\u2019s unclear exactly how Mamdani\u2019s plan would scale up \u2014 a key detail for it to have a measurable impact. And even if it does eventually expand, questions around both logistics and cost remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cYou got Slim Jims?\u201d New York City is talking about groceries \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s very expensive to shop at a local supermarket.\u201d \u201cAnything you buy is high.\u201d \u2014 8.9 percent higher over the last year, to be exact if you like eggs, meat, poultry and fish. And over 5 percent if you like dairy. \u201cWe\u2019re a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[14313,6194,2342,1436,2300],"class_list":{"0":"post-23458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-governmentrun","9":"tag-grocery","10":"tag-mamdanis","11":"tag-plan","12":"tag-stores"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}