New research may help explain food store closure

Bayview Hunters Point isn't the only neighborhood to experience poor access to good food. It's a national problem. The solution, however, may not be national.

Raychelle Rino sent a link to new research about food access that suggests that the sort of corner store conversion programming that Literacy for Environmental Justice, SEFA and its Food Guardians program have advanced in Bayview Hunters Point can be effective.  The research also makes a case for more hyperlocal and targeted efforts, like Quesada Gardens, to improve the food landscape.  

Approaches that consider race alongside other factors are extremely important, the new research suggests. The study found that living in a poor, mostly black neighborhood presented "a double disadvantage" in supermarket access. Unsurprisingly, poor black neighborhoods had fewer supermarkets than wealthier black neighborhoods.

But those neighborhoods also had fewer supermarkets than poor white neighborhoods, suggesting that race still plays a role apart from poverty. In fact, the study showed that black neighborhoods with little poverty had fewer supermarkets, on average, than high-poverty white areas.

"Our study found that it's not simply an issue of poverty," wrote Kelly Bower, an instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, in an email to the Los Angeles Times. "In fact, a racially segregated poor black neighborhood is at an additional disadvantage simply because it is predominantly black."

Food victories in Bayview (and Visitacion Valley!)

Elliott Johnson knows Bayview's food news isn't all bad.  Photo Footprints 2008

The closing of the Fresh and Easy market on 3rd Street last week was a blow to advocates for plentiful and healthy food in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. But that's just the bad news. 

A new Grocery Outlet supermarket will open in Visitacion Valley on Bayshore Boulevard and Sunnydale Avenue, if all goes well at the City Planning Commissions meeting this Thursday. 

 

That is the very good news that came out today in a SF Chronicle article by John Wildermuth.

 

While still a trek for many Bayview residents, the store adds to existing food options which include FoodsCo on Williams and SuperSave on 3rd Street.

 

Other good news is that the Fresh and Easy store closure may have sparked more widespread concern.  One resident has started a petition to attract a Trader Joe's to the neighborhood.  Supervisor Malia Cohen, in a response to the Fresh and Easy closure, said she wants to any new business going into the newly empty commercial space to be a food retailer. 

 

Bayview Footprints and Quesada Gardens Initiative have been covering the topic since early 2007, and has seen a related up-tick in online traffic.  Footprints' community coverage of the issue has been supported by the Bayview HEAL Zone and has featured content contributions from the SEFA Food Guardians...groups heavily engaged in improving food access in the area.  See 173 food topic posts on It's What Community Looks Like.

 

SEFA, which stands for Southeast Food Access, is a multisector collaboration co-chaired by Michael Janis, General Manager of the SF Wholesale Produce Market, and Jacob Moody Executive Director of the BVHP Foundation for Community Improvement.  The collaboration is an example of the SF Department of Public Health's leadership, and that agency's understanding of the  connections between food access and the health of residents. Find SEFA online.

 

SEFA has been meeting since 2007, and has made inroads into defining what it means to be a healthy food retailer, has worked with corner store owners to improve what those outlets offer, and has trained residents to become community health ambassadors. 

 

Youth Leadership Institute is also advocating for residents' health through a marketing campaign that has engaged youth with regard to food and nutrition.  By arrangement with YLI, Footprints will bring you some of the results of that campaign in October and November editions.

 

Today's food news isn't all bad for Bayview, and is part of an ongoing story of a great neighborhood reclaiming itself.

Food policy worker takes work east

Tracey Patterson, a friend of Bayview from the SF Department of Public Health, has left her position as coordinator of SEFA and the Food Guardians after 2 and a half years of service.  She was celebrated with a gathering of colleagues on Wednesday, May 29th, at Candlestick Point Park.

"My family is moving to the East Bay," Tracey reports.  "I have accepted a position in Oakland with the California Food Policy Advocates to work on school food policy.  "This new job will allow me to continue working on food justice issues I am passionate about, while being closer to my 1 year old son."

It's not over until Black businesses owners in Bayview sing!

Kathy Ford of Ford's Market in Bayview with the Food Guardians.
Photo by Joe Prickett 

by Kenneth Hill for SEFA Food Guardians

For many years, Bayview has been regarded as San Francisco's Black Mecca for black businesses and enterprise. Back in the 1970’s you could find an array of Black-owned businesses - from dry cleaners, to tax preparation services and even small full-service grocery stores selling an array of grocery items, including fresh produce.

But over the years, as the demographics of Bayview have changed, so has the vast majority of business ownership. Today in Bayview there are still Black-owned businesses around, but not as nearly as many as there were in the 1970’s. 

Since the large demographic shift in Bayview, it’s been really difficult for Black business owners to stay afloat and evolve with the demand of the community. But with help from Southeast Food Access Working Group and Bayview HEAL Zone initiative, Black business owners are getting much needed help to keep up with the changing demands of the community.  

The number one goal of business owners is to make money. Before venturing into a business, most businesses owners do a considerable amount of research before opening up shop. Some of the research may include a needs assessment to determine whether or not a business is needed in the community as well as an assessment to determine financial gain for the business. 

This is in part true for Black corner store owners Kathy Ford, who succeeded her parents as owner of Ford’s Grocery, and Bob, the owner of Surf Side (better known as Bob’s) in the community. Before opening their stores in Bayview 30 plus years ago, they both saw a need for places in the community for people to purchase food.

“The people up in West Point and Harbor didn’t have a store close by to get  to and the buses didn’t come often, so I knew a corner store was needed and would do fine,” said Bob.

With the need being immensely evident, Black business owners Kathy Ford and Bob opened their corner store businesses and selling a vast array of foods that were of demand by the community.

“When my mother and father first opened Fords we sold meat, fish, breakfast food and produce” said Kathy Ford.

This reality has changed for Kathy Ford’s and Bob’s businesses over the years. During the last two decades they’ve seen peoples’ buying patterns change - from customers coming to pick up a few steaks, a bag of beans, as well as a couple bunches of collard greens, to a bag of chips and a soda.

When asked what she thought contributed to the change in peoples shopping patterns,  Ms. Ford said, “I don’t know…I really don’t know.  But what I do know is that we need to change.  We need to get back to eating collard greens, and healthy food in general.” 

The change Kathy longed for would come in due time.

From a social justice perspective, not having access to fresh affordable produce and healthy food is unfair. Until recently, finding produce and healthy food items in Fords Grocery was like trying to find water in the Arizona desert. The shelves were full of processed, high fat, salty products, and there was not one single piece of produce. But Ms. Ford was for ready for some change at her store. 

On January 16^th and 17^th of this year, Ford’s Grocery became the second corner store owner to participate in the Healthy Retail Conversion Program, and is now offering fresh affordable produce and other healthy food products. 

Lee’s Market in Bayview was the first corner store to bring healthier food and fresh produce into the store in July 2012, and continues to work with the Food Guardians on store improvement.

The Southeast Food Access Food Guardians, through the Healthy Eating Active Living Zone initiative funded by Kaiser Permanente, work with small businesses to increase access to fresh produce and healthy food for the Bayview community in an attempt to level the playing field for all Bayview residents. The Food Guardians hope to work with Bob’s or other small stores in the near future, if funding allows.

Getting produce into Ford’s Grocery was done through a comprehensive 3-legged approach called Retail for Community Health and Sustainability, which involves Community Promotion and Awareness, Retail Technical Assistance, and Policy-Supported Incentives and Regulations.

I  Promotion & Awareness: The SEFA Food Guardians, who are Bayview Hunters Point residents, are the core of the promotion and awareness leg. The Food Guardians promote the changes of the retail project before, during and after the store redesign is set. This is done by conducting various surveys and assessments, promoting the changes at community events, writing news articles, and developing district-wide healthy marketing strategies to let the community know about the healthy changes.

II  Technical Assistance: Stores that participate in the healthy store redesign project are allotted a host of technical assistance support. The technical assistance is provided by Sutti and Associates,  a retail redesign consultant firm with over 35 years of experience in the industry. Sutti provides expertise in developing schematics, produce maintenance, and  product merchandising - not only to the participating stores owners, but also to the Food Guardians so that they can continue to provide ongoing technical assistance to the stores in the long term.

III  Policy Supported Incentives and Regulation: It is hoped that these pilot healthy retail efforts result in the establishment of a citywide program that would bundle together the promotion and awareness piece with the technical assistance piece, and provide incentives such as tax breaks for small businesses making the effort to carry produce, healthy food items while decreasing the sale of junk food, alcohol and tobacco.

This effort gives Black business owners and other small business owners in the Bayview a fighting chance to change their business models to accurately reflect the community’s new ways of thinking in terms of food. The Healthy Retail Conversion program gives business owners an optimistic outlook in terms of their business’ prosperity in a new market. 

According to Scott Schaffer, business consultant with Sutti Associates, “Produce can generate just as much money as alcohol and tobacco, if not more. It’s all about the way you run your business.”

Safety and food access connected

by Kenneth Hill for the SEFA Food Guardians

Throughout the history of humankind, violence, war and terror have been shown to have a ripple effect on society, creating a vast array of unfortunate consequences for affected communities. For example, when the United States was at war with Japan in World War II and dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, it immediately caused tragedy and immense heartache to the Japanese people. Yet years after the bomb had been dropped, Japanese health officials discovered that the atomic bomb had left harmful chemicals in the air and water, causing birth defects that could affect many future generations. In September of 2001, when Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked two American planes and crashed them into New York's Twins Towers, it too caused immediate tragedy. And now, years later, the firefighters and first responders who helped save lives began to develop chronic lung conditions and battles with cancer.

Examining these two occurrences speaks truth to the fact that violence has a ripple effect, and lays the foundation for looking at the fact that Bayview, a disenfranchised neighborhood in San Francisco, suffers from similar ripple effects as a result of community violence. Though violence in Bayview isn’t nearly as extreme as the dropping of the atomic bomb or the 2001 terrorist attacks, it has suffered from decades of drug and gang-related violence that evokes fear into the community, which creates life-changing circumstances that affect the overall health of the community.

When violence increases in Bayview, it raises the level of fear felt by the community and limits the opportunities that the community has access too.

 

"I’ve lived in Bayview all my life, 24 years, up here in Hunters View and I hardly ever venture off down into the flatlands," a Bayview resident stated at a community planning meeting held in the West Point Housing Projects. When the Bayview resident was asked why, he stated "Because it’s not safe for me or my friends to go down there."

 

Yet the flatlands in Bayview are where the majority of stores, shops, clinics - and gangs - are located. This area is very much an asset to the Bayview community in terms of accessing fundamental resources needed for life.  However, because of the level of fear this portion of the neighborhood evokes in many parts of the Bayview community, resources are limited for many community residents.

 

Just as Bayview is known a place where violence frequently erupts, it is also unfortunately known as a food desert. Living in a food desert has major negative health consequences for Bayview residents. According to the US Department of Agriculture, a food desert is an area where a substantial number of residents don’t have easy access to supermarkets that sell affordable produce and healthy food items. This is a reality that many Bayview residents face daily. Many Bayview residents live a mile or more from a full service grocery store and the closest stores are liquor stores and candy houses, which typically sell chips, soda and assorted sugary candies.

 

Living in a food desert has a real impact on the health of many Bayview residents. Residents of San Francisco’s Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood have a life expectancy on average 14 years less than their counterparts on Russian Hill, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. As chronic disease is the leading cause of death, the shorter lifespan is due in part to the limited amount of healthier foods found in the neighborhood and the lack of physical activity that results from living in a dangerous neighborhood. Most of the illnesses that plague Bayview residents are diet-related illnesses, which means that the foods we eat have a negative impact on our bodies. For example, the SF Department of Public Health estimates that over 40% of African American women in Bayview over 45 years of age have some form of diabetes.

 

With the health outcomes amongst Bayview residents being deplorable and unequal to other neighborhoods in the city, there is an opportunity for food advocates to help shift the food dynamic in Bayview.  The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) Food Guardians are working as “Food Ambassadors” to change this food desert by working to improve the access to and the availability of fresh produce and healthy food items. One way that they do this is by working with neighborhood retailers to stock produce and healthy food items.  Lee's Food Mart on Jennings and Revere is their recent project where produce is now available. The Food Guardians are also conducting Food Justice Workshops where they educate about healthier eating and the social causes of poor health, in an attempt to make people aware of their circumstances as they pertain to food access. However, as the Food Guardians address the issue of Bayview being a food desert, the persistent issue of community violence never fails to surface.

 

When a member of the San Francisco Healthy Homes resident committee was asked what could be done to improve the health of Bayview, the answer was, “I don’t know.  No one in Bayview cares about their health when people are outside shooting and dealing drugs.”

 

This perception about health as a secondary concern to the more pressing issue of violence is widespread throughout Bayview. Before anyone can care about their long-term health, they first must feel safe and protect themselves and their families from the violence around them.

 

Bayview has to be transformed into a safe place before many Bayview residents will start to care about their health. This is not to say that no one here cares, but preventative health isn’t at the forefront of the concerns of a lot of people who live here. But it has to be! Our lives literally depend on it. The efforts of SEFA and the Food Guardians, the Bayview HEAL Zone and many other community organizations in Bayview, along with the San Francisco Police Department, need to work together to address the issue of community violence along with other factors of the health of Bayview, making it a safe place for all of us to live and thrive, not just survive.

 

Kenneth Hill is a Food Guardian and is writing on behalf of that program. See his other articles here.

Youth discover opportunity in agriculture

Frequent Footprints contributor and food correspondent Kenneth Hill had an externship this summer at Northridge Coop Community Garden. He offers us a glimpse of his experience, and thanks everyone who made a meaningful field trip possible.

 

by Kenneth Hill, Food Guardians

I’m working with youth in an attempt to inspire them to take part in some form of agriculture with the underlining motive of getting the youth to eat healthier and be physically active as a daily part of their lives.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking the youth on a trip to Tarlesson Family Farm in Capay, California where they not only got to see produce produced on a larger scale, but also saw potential career opportunities in the agriculture business. Rev. Tarlesson led us on the tour of his farm, and did a great job of conveying the potential career opportunities to the youth in a way that was engaging, relevant and fun.

On the fun side, I believe taking this trip has left a meaningful impression on the youth. They got to see many fruits and vegetables they’d never seen or heard of, interacted with livestock like goats and chickens, and drank water from a well. Lastly, yet most importantly, the youth saw another aspect of life.

How Healthy Is Your Neighborhood Store?

By Kenneth Hill, Jazz Vassar and Antonia Williams for the SEFA Food Guardians

The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) Food Guardians – food ambassadors of the Bayview Hunters Point community – are taking back our neighborhood by conducting assessments of the corner and grocery stores in Bayview and working with store owners to help them stock more fresh produce and healthier foods, in an attempt to make it easier for residents to find fresh, affordable produce and healthy foods in our community.

The inability to access fresh and affordable produce in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point district is an unfortunate reality residents face daily. In Bayview the availability of fresh produce is limited and is outweighed by fast food chains, fried chicken joints, and liquor stores selling a variety of unhealthy sugary and salty snacks.

This is not the reality in most neighborhoods in San Francisco. In contrast, residents of the Sunset district enjoy an abundance of fresh produce in their neighborhood. Sunset residents have access to more than eight produce markets within their district that offer a variety of fresh, organic, sustainable, and culturally appropriate produce. In addition, there are a variety of Asian- and American-style full service supermarkets, with bulk sections of grains, beans, and meat counters with an assortment of select grade meats.

It’s clear that the lack of access to fresh, healthy foods has had a negative impact on the health of Bayview Hunters Point residents.  Compared to other San Francisco districts, Bayview residents have far less access to fresh produce and healthy foods and suffer from diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease at disproportionately high rates. SEFA, a coalition of community residents, community based organizations and City agencies, convened in 2007 in an attempt to improve the availability of healthier foods and health outcomes in Bayview Hunters Point.

One way to encourage the availability of healthier foods in Bayview was to develop the SEFA Retail Standards for Health and Sustainability. The SEFA Retail Standards are based on national best practices for what a healthy and sustainable grocery and corner store should look like. We used the SEFA Retail Standards to rate grocery and corner stores on the availability of healthy food items, as well as cleanliness, loitering, local hiring practices, and the presence of advertisements for junk food, alcohol and tobacco.

With a packet of standards, a clip board, and good luck, the Food Guardians set off to explore the local food stores.

The SEFA Retail Standards were used not only to rate the stores, but also to create long lasting partnerships with store owners. The assessments were a great opportunity to introduce store owners to the Food Guardians and tell them about our work. Some stores welcomed us warmly and talked about how they were involved in the “Good Neighbor” project, a Literacy for Environmental Justice youth-led program that worked to improve corner stores until 2009. Other stores were more suspicious of the purpose of our visit and needed more reassurance that we weren’t from the public health department sent there to shut them down. However, we were friendly and forthcoming about our project, and were allowed to assess nearly every store in the neighborhood- only Torino’s Market on Third Street declined to participate.

Given the disparities in the Bayview described above, we weren’t surprised to see that the shelves and coolers of neighborhood stores were often filled with unhealthy products. In our daily lives, many of us never think to really look closely at the ratio of healthy food to junk food around us. Our purpose in rating the stores with SEFA Retail Standards was not to air dirty laundry, but to reveal both the healthy and unhealthy foods available in our community. We are creating knowledge for the people in the community, while also holding stores accountable for their lack of healthy options.

Twenty corner stores and four grocery stores later the assessments were complete. We then realized the complexity of evaluating the level of food access, e.g. ‘Store A has fresh eggs, yet doesn’t accept EBT. Store B accepts EBT, yet doesn’t have any fresh vegetables or 100% whole wheat bread.’  So we created a scoring system to identify the standards deemed ‘most desirable’ for a healthier store. Corner and grocery stores were rated separately using separate user-friendly apple and grocery bag systems: for corner stores 3 apples were the highest rating and no apples were the lowest; whereas the grocery stores with the highest rating received the golden grocery bag rating, then the silver, lastly the bronze.  You can see all the store’s results on our website.

The gold standard for
food in Bayview Hunters Point

After carefully reviewing the results, we put together informational folders to share with each store owner and encourage them to increase the healthy food sold in their stores, improve the store environment, and help create a more equitable, healthy and sustainable food system for Bayview residents. Each store feedback folder included:

• a handout describing SEFA
• an invitation to our newly launched website with links to the results
• a store results comparison sheet
• the actual SEFA Retail Standards that we used we when visited the store
• two handouts of recommended healthy cereal and snack alternatives
• an individual store sheet with the store’s strengths and suggested areas of improvements
• and finally contact information for the Food Guardians in case of further questions, comments or concerns.

The next step was to go out and meet with the store owners to go over our results and feedback. While meeting with the store owners we learned a lot of useful information about the challenges that store owners face. For example, small corner store owners that are located near a grocery store find it difficult to sell produce or other items that the grocery store can sell at much lower prices. Produce also has a short shelf life, and if they do not sell in a certain amount of time it will end up being a loss to the store. Additionally, some stores are located in a turf area that may be avoided by other residents. However, we were happy to see that our feedback and suggestions were positively received by many stores. We heard many encouraging comments like, “We’re willing to try if this is what the community wants.”  One store owner told us, “After seeing this, I’ve got to get it together!”

 

At the end of the day, we received a range of responses from owners that let us know that our work was appreciated.  What more could we ask for than great new partnerships with the stores? We will be repeating these store assessments on an annual basis, and hope to find out at the end of the year just how helpful our information is when we go back to rate the stores again and look for changes and improvements.

 

You can do your part by asking for healthier, better quality foods at your local corner and grocery store. We can support local businesses to be a better resource for our community by demanding higher quality, healthier foods, and shopping locally to let store owners know these positive changes are appreciated.

HEAL Zone now online

The HEAL Zone is thrilled that the Southeast Food Access Coalition (SEFA), a Bayview Hunters Point-based project of the Shape Up San Francisco initiative, launched a new website, SoutheastFoodAccess [dot] org.

The new site highlights the work of SEFA and the Food Guardians, and features a section on where to find healthy food in the Bayview at local stores and food pantries; community gardens and gardening resources; and community-based organizations that offer nutrition education. SoutheastFoodAccess provides ratings of 20 corner stores and small markets and four larger food markets located in the Bayview. It also serves information about the types of healthy food available at each store.

SEFA is a collaborative of residents, community based organizations, city agencies and others working on food access and food systems. SEFA's goal is to leverage similar efforts and encourage partnerships and collaboration in order to achieve a vibrant and robust food system for all in Bayview Hunters Point.

The SEFA Food Guardians are a group of Bayview Hunters Point residents who educate, advocate and mobilize to address community food security and justice, promote nutrition education and awareness, and support urban agriculture in their community.

Bayview HEAL Zone is launched

Saturday, February 11th was a fabulous day to launch the Bayview HEAL Zone, a three-year Kaiser Permanente-funded grant which was officially kicked off at the MLK Pool complex.

The event featured many free and fun fitness activities with over 200 participating adults, children and seniors.  Forty walkers walked the HEAL Zone from MLK Pool to the SuperSave store along 3rd Street.  At the pool, much splashing, kicking and hitting (balls!) as well as shimmying and shaking were enjoyed by the young and older alike.

The crowd was energized by remarks from Kenneth Hill and Antonia Williams, Food Guardians, Tomas Aragon, MD,  DPH's Health Officer, and Neal Hatten from the Bayview Y.  HEAL Zone Coordinator Cheryl Davis emceed the program and six mini-grant recipients funded through UCSF's SF Health Improvement Project were announced  by Paula Fleischer.

Free produce from the SF Wholesale Produce Market preceeded a healthy meal prepared by Chef Kevin Tucker.  Advisory Committe member, Dwayne Robinson, Bayview Barber College, provided free hair cuts.  SF Parks and Recreation deserves a big splash of gratitude for offering FREE swim! The BVHP Y's Michael Bennett and the many volunteers did a great job organizing what was a healthy, fun day!

Related news: The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) working group - which is central to the HEAL Zone work - will be holding its February monthly meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 28th from 3:30-5 pm at the Southeast Health Center (2401 Keith St). All are welcome to join us!

In late January, the SEFA Food Guardians attended a 2-day peer education training led by Kaiser Permanente's African-American Health Initiative. After attending this training, the Food Guardians have become certified to lead "Caring for Your Family's Health" workshops, which focus on health inequities in the African-American community and ways participants can incorporate prevention to take charge of their family's health, particularly with diet and exercise.  

The Food Guardians finished compiling all the data gathered from the SEFA Retail Standards for Health and Sustainability assessment, which was conducted in 24 corner and grocery stores in late 2011.

They are currently organizing these findings to be able to provide each store owner with a feedback folder with their assessment results, a summary of store strengths and suggestions for improvement, tip sheets on purchasing and handling produce, and a list of products that meet nutritional standards.  more

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Bayview Footprints is grateful to Bayview HEAL Zone for underwriting the cost of this space, and looks forward to keeping our readers up-to-date about the program's successes.

Change you can't afford to miss

By Jasmine Vassar for the Food Guardians

Dubbed by many as the year of universal transformation, 2012 is bringing about many changes right here in our own backyard.  From some of the newly renovated storefronts on Third Street to the many enthused residents who are upgrading to healthier lifestyles, many can’t help but notice that change is a buzz in the air. 

Opportunities at the Bayview YMCA

The local Bayview YMCA continues to promote exciting new ways to move as it nears its two-year anniversary of hosting classes of the dance workout craze, Zumba. 

Also adding to the mix, the heavily anticipated Bayview HEAL Zone project is launching this month. The HEAL Zone Project is a collaborative, Bayview Hunters Point community-based project funded by Kaiser Permanente. HEAL stands for Healthy Eating Active Living, and the goal of the project is to work with the Bayview Hunters Point community so that residents may eat better and move more in places where they live, work, learn and play.

Many residents of Bayview take on the challenge to snap into shape within the multitude of exercise programs offered at the Y. After almost two and a half years at the Y, Zumba has come along way. 

“[At first], people couldn’t get through the first 15 minutes,” instructor Gigi Hill-Hopkins  reminisced. “Now people are finishing and going beyond.” 

Zumba offers a high energy and motivating workout with influences from Latin, African, hip-hop rhythms synchronized with fun and easy-to-follow Latin dance moves. It has been so popular with residents that they get more than 100 people to attend their Thursday evening and Saturday morning classes. Until recently, these classes have been offered completely free of charge, but lately the Y started charging $5 for non-members.

Besides all of the enjoyment of the movement, there have been real health improvements. 

Ms. Hill-Hopkins said, “Many of my students have told me success stories of how their diabetes is now under control, or that their cholesterol is now normal.” 

One participant, Barbara, 65, said, “Come out and try it!” She doesn’t let anything stop her from working out six days a week, not even her bad knee.  “We got to keep on moving, and it’s a great way to meet other women your own age.”

Barriers to "health in motion"

Other residents are facing some huge barriers from getting their health in motion. For some, memberships at the YMCA, 3^rd Street Boxing Gym, and other local fitness programs can be unaffordable.  For those who want to exercise outside, pollutants emitted from trucks and the sewage treatment plant, and garbage strewn throughout the streets can aggravate health problems ... as evidenced by the high rates of asthma in Bayview Hunters Point. Other residents stay in their homes in certain parts of the neighborhood due to fear of violence. 

When adding up these factors - lack of finances, unhealthy air, limited access to certain parts of the neighborhood - many people may ask themselves “What real choices do I have to get healthy?” 

Motivation to try new things can be smothered by others as well.  Some look to peers for encouragement, but instead get judgment. Some believe that living a healthy life is a privilege for people who have great means, rather than a right that everyone should have opportunity to access. 

There is healthy-living assistance from community programs for those ready to get involved and create partnerships that go against oppressive forces.  Personal challenges are unique for the residents here, but the collective drive to transform the Bayview for the better is emerging in this sunny sector of SF. Gathering together with families creates an open safe space for these relationships to blossom.

Bayview's food improves as leaders step forward

by Jeffrey Betcher

Unless you live in a place like Bayview Hunters Point, where residents face big challenges when it comes to finding healthy affordable food nearby, you may not understand why we get so excited about small victories.

The opening of a new mid-sized market is a welcome development in most urban neighborhoods, but not "game-changing." Here, the opening of just such a market, Fresh & Easy, rates as the biggest event of the year for many residents, and an emotional experience shared by the community at large.

Bayview Footprints has covered the "food beat" in the neighborhood for years. Now, we're happy to share some recent developments that are feeding the momentum of positive change.

On the heels of Fresh and Easy opening a store at 5800 3rd Street, Limon Rotisserie (pictured lower center) has just opened its newest restaurant at the same location. Limon's grand opening was Friday, taking Chef Martin Castillo and his broth Antonio Castillo a step closer to their vision of bringing San Francisco casual affordable dining that would make a native Peruvian homesick. Try the Pollo a la Brasa, marinated and slow roasted chicken paired with aji sauces and native spices. The dish is a national favorite in Peru, and Limon's signature offering. See the full menu online

For more information, or to make a reservation at Limon call 415.926.5665, email them, or visit them online.

Antonia Williams is part of a slow, quiet food revolution.

Jazz Vassar, Antonia Williams, Jameela Toups and Kenneth Hill (pictured above top) presented a workshop called “Food Justice: Honoring our Roots, Growing the Movement” at the Community Food Security Coalition’s 15th Annual Conference in Oakland last month. Well over 100 people attended to hear about strategies to improve access to healthy affordable food that include education, outreach, research and policy work.

The presenters are Bayview Hunters Point residents who are part of the SEFA Food Guardians Project, a group of community health workers focused on food issues. The program emerged from the Southeast Food Access Working Group.

The SEFA Food Guardians were featured in the most recent San Francisco Bay Guardian as part of an article by Christopher Cook.

Antonia Williams (pictured lower right) was highlighted in the article, sharing a bit of her personal journey as well as her experience as a community health worker passionate about improving food options where she lives.

Many residents remember the once-a-week farmers market on Mendell Plaza that popped up seasonally for five years. A new conversation about trying again is underway, with a tentative launch scheduled for the spring of next year. An organizing meeting at Renaissance Bayview's offices is being scheduled. Contact James Moore at 415.647.3728 ext. 6, or by email, to get involved.

In all the excitement about Fresh & Easy and other new food victories in the neighborhood, it's good to remember that FoodsCo and SuperSave have both improved offerings of healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables, in recent years. SuperSave is an independent, family-owned business. FoodsCo is part of the Kroger supermarket chain.

Ann Berry (pictured above left), a longtime advocate for the neighborhood, and an early voice in the demand for improved access to healthy foods, has just won a Berkeley School of Public Health award for her work benefiting senior citizens.

Ann works for Network for Elders, a group that demonstrated in front of FoodsCo, attracted media attention, and helped inspire public health and funding leaders to start the Southeast Food Access Working Group (SEFA). 

Congratulations, Ann Berry, for this well-deserved honor!