Tully: A ride with Joe Hogsett through a food desert

A few men were cleaning out the last remaining items inside the suddenly shuttered Double 8 grocery at 29th and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Monday afternoon when Joe Hogsett walked onto the lot.

He said hello to a police officer guarding the store and then turned to me.

"I have a crazy idea," he said. "Are you up for a walk?"

The Democratic nominee for mayor had called me out to the crime-plagued neighborhood to talk about the ongoing problem of food deserts and food insecurity in the city, a problem now worsened by the closure of the last few Double 8 stores. He said he wanted to learn more about the shopping options that remain for the area's residents.

The former U.S. Attorney walked across MLK Drive and into a nearby gas station, which now serves as the only place to buy groceries in the neighborhood. The front door had a flier asking for information on a recent shooting and the aisles were filled with what you'd expect: Candy and chips, canned ravioli and donuts. Don't come in here looking for an apple.

"It's not what you would call a great selection," Hogsett said.

As he walked through the gas station, a 43-year-old man named Tyrone Anderson walked up. He said the neighborhood was already hit by drugs and violence, and now it doesn't even have a decent place to shop for groceries.

"What are you going to do about the older citizens around here?" he said. "There's a lot of them. What are they going to do?"

Hogsett has some ideas. Good ideas. But the truth is there are no easy fixes to a problem that has unfolded over decades, as neighborhoods like this one have hollowed out. The solution is roll-up-your-sleeves, neighborhood-by-neighborhood hard work. And while Double 8 stores weren't exactly meccas of high-quality food, their sudden closure has at least shined a needed spotlight on the pressing issue of food deserts in Indianapolis.

I should note that shortly after I finished writing this column, Republican candidate Chuck Brewer also announced plans to tackle the issue.

After a few minutes in the gas station, Hogsett shared the main reason he'd invited me out on the blazing hot afternoon. He wanted to take a trip, on a city bus, to the nearest grocery store, just to see what a resident without a car would experience. So we walked a couple blocks south and grabbed our spots on the sidewalk, waiting for the 15 to take us to the Safeway at 30th and Kessler.

"Here's the point," Hogsett said as we waited, "This store closing is just further destabilizing the neighborhood. An anchor for any strong neighborhood is access to high-quality food."

And this neighborhood, one of the six high-crime, high-poverty zones being targeted for attention by the city, doesn't have that access.

We walked past a liquor store and abandoned buildings, and we chatted with a cop who told us, "There are a lot of really good people in this neighborhood." But what we didn't see was any place where a parent could buy the ingredients for a home-cooked meal.

The temperature was pushing 90 when we arrived at the bus stop on 27th Street and there weren't many clouds in the sky. The bus was a few minutes late and the experience made me think about how easy it is to drive in my air-conditioned Honda to the handful of grocery stores that are a short trot from my house.

"Imagine if you're elderly and standing out here in this heat," Hogsett said. "We're no spring chickens but we're healthy guys. Imagine if you were 75 years old and standing out here, or if you're a single mother with two kids. It's summer or winter and all you want to do is get some food, and it isn't easy around here."

It's an immense problem.

An IUPUI study in 2011 found 15 food deserts in Indianapolis home to more than 48,000 residents, and a 2014 WalkScore.com study found that Indianapolis ranked last when it came to the percentage of residents who live within a five-minute walk of a grocery store. This, in a city where roughly 26 percent of Indianapolis families live in poverty and where thousands of children suffer from the cruel reality of food insecurity.

"This is the kind of issue that is going to make or break the city of Indianapolis," Hogsett said after we boarded our bus. "We have to understand how vulnerable a lot of our neighborhoods are."

There are short-term solutions: Churches that are providing shuttles between food deserts and grocery stores, as well as food pantries that can move in to more hard-hit neighborhoods.

Longer-term, Hogsett would like to see a more aggressive push for community gardens. If elected, he said he would place the issue at the forefront of his administration. He said he would appoint a high-ranking staff member who would likely report to the deputy mayor for neighborhoods, "who wakes up every single day zeroed in on this problem and what can be done to address it."

Hogsett said the city could provide incentives and other support for grocery stores, working as hard to bring access to food into struggling neighborhoods as it does to bring conventions and restaurants to downtown Indianapolis. He said he would work with nonprofit stores and co-ops that are serving other neighborhoods, by navigating through red tape and encouraging landlords to lower barriers to entering the marketplace. The city could create tax districts aimed at making certain areas attractive to grocery stores.

"The question," Hogsett said, "is, how creative and how innovative are we willing to be to help the people in these neighborhoods?"

It won't be easy. But making the issue a top-level one in the mayor's office would be an important step, as is understanding how tied food access is to neighborhood development, crime and education. Fortunately, Hogsett noted, the Ballard administration has taken important steps toward addressing the issue that will give the next mayor momentum.

About 40 minutes after we met at the Double 8, Hogsett and I stepped off the city bus and walked into Safeway. The store was clean and well stocked; the prices were good. Still, it would be quite a road trip just for a sack of groceries. It’s easy to see why many just head to the gas station filled with junk food.

"We have to think about access, about convenience," Hogsett said. "This is about good nutrition and asking what we can do to help neighborhoods and what more we can do to make certain that the people within them can live healthier lives."

There are a lot of pressing issues in the city. But few are as basic and critical as this one.

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or at Twitter.com/matthewltully.