Healthy Food Access: Improve Resident Health, Save Site Money

By Carolyn E. Zezima, Esq.

Residents at tax credit sites often have difficulty finding affordable and healthy food. Tax credit and other assisted

sites are often located in neighborhoods where food options are limited to convenience stores, liquor stores, or fast

food restaurants that offer low-cost but unhealthy snacks and meals. Supermarkets, grocery stores, and other

retailers that offer fresh produce and other healthy food choices either may be miles away, making it difficult for

residents without transportation to shop for healthier options, or may be too expensive for low-income residents to

afford the healthy food.

Indeed, low-income residents who try to buy more produce and other healthy food can spend a disproportionate

amount of their monthly income on food, making it more difficult to pay their other expenses. They often must make

difficult monthly decisions, whether to use their limited income to buy food or to pay other household expenses, such

as their share of the unit’s rent, utilities, healthcare, telephone, and transportation costs to get to or look for work,

says Jan Kasameyer, resident services program supervisor at Home Forward, the housing authority in Portland, Ore.

Many residents rely on monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to purchase most or all

of their family’s food for the month. Unfortunately, those dollars aren’t usually enough to pay for more expensive

healthy food and residents have to stretch their food dollars with unhealthy processed items. Facing these

challenges, it’s no surprise that low-income residents have dramatically higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and other

diet-related diseases and related healthcare costs than the general population, says Home Forward’s community

planning research fellow, Aniko Drlik-Muehleck.

Owners and managers of affordable housing sites are in a unique position to provide greater healthy food access to

their residents, says Bomee Jung, deputy director at Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) in New York

City. Many owners and managers recognize how important fresh food access is for the health and well-being of their

residents and are adding healthy food access programs to the amenities and services they offer. We’ll tell you how

increasing healthy food access will benefit your site and give you information about the types of food access

programs you can consider creating at your tax credit site.

Benefits to Site Owners

Increasing healthy food access provides numerous benefits to both residents and owners of tax credit sites. Among

the reasons our experts gave for creating food access programs include:

Healthier residents;

Lower turnover costs;

Fewer resident conflicts;

Improved site security and safety;

Lower food costs for residents;

Fewer delinquent rent payments;

Lower vacancy costs from resident long-term illness;

Better economic mobility opportunities for residents; and

Improved marketing appeal and community relations for the site.

Many new construction and major rehabilitation developers now include food access programs in the site’s design

and planning, such as integrating or locating near healthy grocery stores and farmers markets. That’s because

owners can get incentives through financing, zoning, and green design programs, as well as state or federal tax

credits under programs like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and the New Market Tax Credit programs, says

Shaina Burkett, Human Services Program Specialist at the Denver Housing Authority (DHA), which offers numerous

food access programs for residents of Denver’s public housing, tax credit, and other assisted sites. For example,

Enterprise’s Green Communities program is one of several third-party green building certification programs that state

housing finance agencies reference in their QAPs. Enterprise recently developed healthy local food access guidelines

for affordable housing developers in New York to use to add healthy food access to sites that can give them priority

or extra points on federal and state financing applications, says Jung.

WAYS TO PROVIDE HEALTHY FOOD ACCESS

The Insider consulted experts around the country who have started and managed food access programs at tax credit

and other assisted sites. They identified numerous food access program options that you can choose from to help get

fresh, healthy food to your residents—often for little or no expense to your site. These programs fall into five major

categories:

Growing food on site;

Operating or connecting residents to farmers markets and other healthy food markets;

Organizing food delivery programs;

Providing onsite meals; and

Offering nutrition education and community kitchen programs for residents.

We’ll tell you more about your options under each type of program.

Growing Food on Site

Growing food directly on site is one way that sites make fresh, healthy food available to residents, either by making it

possible for residents to have their own gardens or even running a farm on or near site premises.

Community gardens. Many sites have added community gardens for residents to grow food. Resident community

gardens are shared spaces at tax credit and other affordable housing sites where residents gather to garden and

grow food. They can range in size from one communal raised bed to hundreds or thousands of square feet of

individual plots to several acres. They can serve just a few residents or as many as 50 or more, and can serve

special populations of residents, such as seniors, youth, or residents with disabilities. For more information about how

to start a community garden at your site, see “Take 10 Steps to Create a Successful Community Garden for

Residents.”

Urban/onsite farms. Some sites take the idea of growing food on site even further and have full-blown production

farms on site grounds or even on rooftops. These farms grow a diverse array of vegetables, flowers, and herbs for

sale. Onsite farms often generate income to benefit the residents by using the proceeds to pay residents to help run

the farm or selling food to residents at a reduced cost, giving vegetables to residents as “payment” for volunteering on

the farm, or for use in onsite meals programs. Many sites use their farms to teach classes, empower residents

towards self-reliance, and train youth for employment.

For example, Project HOME in Philadelphia grows most of its fruits and vegetables for its meals program, using them

fresh during the season and freezing them for use during the winter. Growing food on site also helps keep the site’s

budget stable as other food costs increase, says Carolyn Crouch-Robinson, Project HOME’s director of residential

services. Any produce that doesn’t get used in meals goes to residents who have no income at all to supplement their

meals, she adds.

These farms are often run by residents and managed by partner organizations with the expertise to grow and sell

produce and train residents. Homeword in Missoula, Mont., partnered with Garden City Harvest to create a 1.5-acre

farm at Orchard Gardens, one of its tax credit sites. The farm produces over 16,000 pounds of produce each year

and is run entirely by residents who volunteer on the farm and are “paid” in vegetables, says Jean Zosel, executive

director.

Similarly, Rockford Housing Authority’s (RHA) Blackhawk Courts in Illinois contracts with Angelic Organics Learning

Center (AOLC) to run its farm. AOLC pays residents “market money,” including youth, when they volunteer at the

farm and as an incentive to perform other site services, attend trainings, or take surveys. Five-year-old children at the

site save their market money to buy cucumbers and fresh fruit, teaching them important budgeting and other life

skills, says AOLC’s program director Danica Hoehn.

Managing Programs Yourself vs. Contracting with Partners

A growing number of tax credit sites have a staff and budget for programs that help residents get important

services and skills to gain employment and become more self-sufficient, including food access programs.

Running programs yourself can work if you have the budget and can hire staff with the right expertise, for

example, to cook meals using the site’s kitchen and to participate in federally or state-funded meal programs.

It helps if the program can be run with minimal expertise and staff time, using the site’s service coordinator or

resident services staff, or with resident volunteers, such as an onsite food pantry. But for food access

programs like onsite farms, farmers markets, or community kitchen programs, starting and running them

yourself can cost you more money and create management headaches, particularly if your site doesn’t have

the expertise or time to run them effectively, says Michael Buonocore, executive director of Home Forward in

Portland, Ore.

The key to running successful food access programs, particularly if you want to run multiple programs that

complement each other and ensure affordable, healthy food access for all residents, is to partner with

experienced community organizations to work with site staff and residents to plan, fund, publicize, and

manage the food program. It’s important to partner with organizations that are truly based in the community

and have existing relationships with other organizations that can support all aspects of the program, says

Buonocore.

You may want to partner with several organizations that can contribute to different aspects of the program,

such as resident organizing, funding, technical assistance, access to volunteers, transportation, cooking and

nutrition classes, and income or vocational training opportunities for residents.

Here are the types of organizations you may want to consider contacting and recruiting as potential partners:

• Community agencies

• Food access organizations

• Nonprofit food organizations

• Technical service providers

• Urban farming and gardening organizations

• Farmers market organizations

• Farmers and food producers

• Grocery stores and distributors

• Hospitals and public health organizations

• Nutritionists and dieticians

• Local chefs and restaurants

• Youth organizations

• Community development organizations

• Green building and food retail financing agencies

• Mayors’ initiatives for food and fitness

• Churches

• Foundations

• Volunteer service organizations

Connecting Residents with Onsite or Nearby Markets

Many sites create healthy food markets on site or connect residents to ones near the site benefitting the residents

and the site, particularly a new site’s ability to get financing. For example, Enterprise’s healthy food access guidelines

for New York encourage developers to locate affordable housing sites within a half-mile of farmers markets.

Farmers markets. Hosting or connecting residents to onsite or nearby farmers markets gives them direct access to a

variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. Farmers markets usually take place regularly, from once a month to several

times a week, at outdoor locations where farmers from the area gather to sell their seasonal produce directly to

consumers. Some farmers markets are informal networks of farmers, but many are organized by a nonprofit or third-

party organizer that collects fees from participating farmers to support the overhead items, such as location,

electricity, equipment, insurance, licensing and health permit fees, and other costs of running a farmers market.

Farmers markets can help create economic opportunity for residents and build life skills, says Ron Clewer, RHA’s

CEO. Sales of food grown and produced locally have a much stronger impact on the overall local economy than food

shipped from far away. Plus, sites and farmers can hire residents to staff the booths, or pay them in produce. They

are also a great way to bring the surrounding community together to interact with residents and improve the site’s

image and relationship with neighbors, Clewer adds.

If you own or manage multiple sites, you can host a farmers market at your main management office, says Beth Keel,

sustainability initiatives liaison for the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA). SAHA operates a farmers market twice

a month outside its main office, where residents come to deal with management for most of their housing needs. Or if

you don’t have the space or capacity to host a farmers market, you can partner with a farmers market in the area and

promote it to residents in meetings, with flyers and newsletters, says Keel.

Make sure when starting or connecting residents to a local farmers market that the residents on SNAP can use their

monthly benefits to pay the farmers, says Kasameyer. Setting up the ability to pay with SNAP can be a cumbersome

and expensive process, so many farmers market organizers do this on behalf of all the farmers at the market by

setting up “electronic benefit transfer” (EBT) accounts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and purchasing EBT

machines that accept SNAP for payment. Often, the market has an EBT booth where shoppers can use their SNAP

card to purchase chips to pay the farmers for their food. The farmers cash in their chips at the end of the market day

or get paid monthly from the market organization’s main office. For more information on how to accept SNAP at

farmers markets, seehttp://www.fns.usda.gov/ebt/learn-about-snap-benefits-farmers-markets.

Editor’s Note: One downside to farmers markets can be the cost to residents. Fresh fruits and vegetables

from local farms often cost more to produce and sell than other foods, especially fast and mass-produced

food items. So the federal government, and many states and cities, have created incentives to help low-

income residents afford to buy more fruits and vegetables. For example, residents on SNAP or WIC benefits

can get vouchers to use at farmers markets that match a portion of the residents’ benefit dollars or add a set

dollar bonus to increase the amount a resident can spend for fruits and vegetables. Find out if your local

farmers market has vouchers for residents to use and help residents get those vouchers so they can increase

their healthy food consumption, says Kasameyer.

Onsite healthy grocery stores. Federal, state, and local governments encourage building healthy grocery stores in

communities that lack healthy food access by offering financial assistance and other incentives for developers. Many

new tax credit sites include healthy supermarkets and other grocery stores in plans for their site’s commercial space

to get priority from state housing agencies for tax credits and for other financing. And existing sites with empty

commercial space that partner with grocery developers and other organizations can get funding to add healthy

grocery stores through programs, such as the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative

(http://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/grantOpportunities.aspx), the Low Income Investment Fund

(http://www.liifund.org/programs/healthy-food/), organizations like The Food Trust (www.thefoodtrust.org), and state

and local healthy grocery funding and incentive programs.

But you don’t have to invest in a big supermarket or large retail initiative to add a healthy grocery store to your site.

Home Forward in Portland worked with a local food organization to help residents create and run their own small

nonprofit healthy corner store in the middle of one of Home Forward’s HOPE VI sites. The store, called Village

Market, carries a full line of food products—including a large produce case, bulk food such as beans and brown rice,

meats, dairy, deli items, and ethnic specialties appealing to the large immigrant and refugee population—grown and

prepared by local farmers and food producers, says Kasameyer. The store accepts SNAP and WIC and provides jobs

for youth and residents, who handle the store’s inventory, purchasing, and sales with the management and support

from the site’s partner, Village Gardens. The store also hosts a regular farmers market outside that sells organic

produce from one of Home Forward’s small onsite farms, employing youth who plant, harvest, and sell the produce.

Practical Pointer: Some sites that don’t have farmers markets or healthy grocery markets on or near their

site will provide or coordinate low-cost transportation and other support to get residents to healthy markets.

You can use staff to drive residents, but many cities have free transportation for senior and disabled residents

to get them to farmers markets and healthy grocery markets, says Kasameyer.

Mobile markets. If you don’t have commercial space or the capacity to open a full grocery store or farmers market at

your site, find out if mobile healthy food markets or other healthy food trucks operate in your area. Mobile markets

operate out of large trucks or vans, selling produce and other healthy food, often to low-income neighborhoods with

few healthy food retail choices nearby. The vans sell food for individual purchase or as part of a membership or

weekly produce box delivery (see food delivery options below for more information). For an example and photo of a

mobile healthy food market created for FoodShare Toronto, see http://architecturelab.net/mobile-good-food-market-

toronto-canada-lga-architectural-partners/

Onsite emergency food pantry. Running onsite emergency food pantries for residents is another way sites make

food available for little or no cost to the site. You can run a small, informal food pantry using staff and volunteers, who

seek donations from local churches, agencies, and food banks, says Kasameyer. Some sites make canned and other

packaged food available to residents on request. Others have regular food pantry days in the community rooms

where the food pantry drops off food staples, such as canned fruit and vegetables, rice, tuna, and soups. Often a

site’s service coordinator oversees and gives residents a stipend to distribute the food. For example, Project HOME

has launched a 30,000 square foot wellness center that includes a large daily food pantry to collect and distribute

canned food, along with fresh produce from local gardens.

Organizing Food Delivery Programs

Some sites run or facilitate partner- or resident-run food delivery programs by providing space for storing, packing,

and distributing food delivered to the site. These programs include:

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. CSA programs improve resident access to healthy food by

connecting residents directly to local and regional farmers who bring their harvest to the residents. Residents pay a

fee at the beginning of the growing season, which entitles them to a share in the farmers’ harvest. Farmers then

provide a weekly harvest share that organizers distribute to the residents who participate. Residents get fresh, high-

quality local produce and learn more about food and farming while giving local farmers a regular market for their

crops. For some considerations for running CSA programs, see “Considerations for Starting or Hosting CSAs and

Other Bulk Food Delivery Programs,” below.

Bulk purchase programs. Bulk purchase programs allow groups of people or organizations to buy healthy food in

bulk to get more for their food dollar. These programs range from fresh produce and other healthy food box delivery

programs, food cooperatives (small “markets” owned by and for members who manage purchases and sales

together), and bulk buying clubs, which are more informal groups of residents who get together and buy agreed-upon

food in bulk to save money, says Debbie Field of Toronto’s Food Share program, which creates toolkits and

resources for people who want to set up healthy bulk purchase programs. Some programs focus just on fresh

produce; others provide a full array of healthy food products, including meat, dairy, and pantry items. Unlike CSAs,

the food isn’t supplied by one specific farm to support its harvest season, but from a variety of sources, including

farms, supermarkets, wholesalers, food banks, and online sources, says Field. If money is tight, some clubs even use

donations from food banks or other sources to supplement their bulk purchases.

Other food delivery options. If you don’t have the staff or capacity to run a regular onsite food delivery program,

you can partner with a local food bank, or senior or other social service organization that delivers emergency food

boxes directly to residents who can’t make ends meet. Emergency food boxes help those residents have some basic

food available at the end of the month to feed their families, particularly for residents whose SNAP benefits aren’t

enough to buy food for the whole month, says Kasameyer. Unlike some of the other food access programs, these

emergency food boxes usually contain mainly staple items, like canned goods, cereals, breads, and grains. But some

cities’ programs do include fresh produce, and occasionally even fresh meat or poultry at holidays to make meals

more festive, says Kasameyer. Meals on Wheels or other free meal delivery programs are another option for senior

or disabled residents who are homebound, or otherwise unable to cook.

Offering Education Programs

Nutrition education. An important part of healthy food access is knowing: (1) which foods are healthy and which

foods are not; (2) how to shop for healthy food on a limited budget; and (3) what to do with types of healthy food that

residents haven’t eaten or cooked before, says Crouch-Robinson. Project HOME partners with a local health

promotion council and invites dietitians and nutritionists to give one-on-one and group nutrition and cooking education

to residents who want or need it. The dietitians also train the kitchen coordinators who run meal programs at several

sites how to make the resident meals healthier, she adds.

Some food access programs, such as CSAs or farmers markets, often include nutrition education, healthy recipes, or

cooking demonstrations, or even require such education to get benefits such as farmers market vouchers or WIC

coupons.

Community kitchen programs. Some sites have community centers that include kitchens that often go unused.

Instead, let residents and outside agencies use them to teach cooking to other residents, host healthy meal events,

prepare or preserve produce from onsite community gardens or farms, or create food products for sale, job training

for youth, and other activities for residents. Community kitchen programs are a great way to connect residents to

healthy food by involving them in the cooking process, says Kasameyer.

But before you let staff, residents, and outside agencies use the kitchen, you’ll need to address several legal and

management concerns, such as complying with health and safety regulations; avoiding injuries; determining

appropriate age groups for classes; setting clean-up responsibilities; and covering food, insurance, equipment

purchases and maintenance and other program costs, warns Kasameyer. Discuss these issues with your site’s

attorney, and look for future Insider articles on these topics.

Onsite affordable healthy restaurants. The Denver Housing Authority (DHA) has taken a particularly innovative

approach to residents’ access to healthy food and economic empowerment: It operates a free culinary academy for

youth ages 16 to 21 that then employs graduates to operate an onsite lunch café in the commercial space of one of

its HOPE VI sites. The café serves affordably priced, healthy meals made from locally produced ingredients. Most

meals cost less than $8 per person, including a drink and a side, and the menu changes daily. The kitchen is state-of-

the-art and energy-efficient, resulting in no additional energy costs to the site, says Damon McIntyre, DHA’s lead

coordinator for education and employment services. The café, which has won several local food competitions, gives

youth skills toward a career path and self-sufficiency, and economic opportunities for residents, while feeding them

healthy and affordable food, says McIntyre. The program is funded with the help of donation from private funders,

such as JP Morgan Chase.

Check Before Charging Fees for Common Area Use

If you use common area space in your site’s eligible basis, like your community center, patio, or rooftop, to run food

access programs, such as a garden, urban farm, or community kitchen program, you cannot charge a fee to any

service provider for that space, says A.J. Johnson, president of A.J. Johnson Consulting Services. Nor can you

charge a fee to any resident, even your market-rate residents, to use that space. Improperly charging fees for the use

of eligible basis space could lead to the denial of tax credits relating to that area, warns Johnson. Common areas

must be equally available and provided without charge to all residents at the site, including residents who are not low

income.

You can, however, charge for the food itself, or for any optional services in that space, such as cooking classes or the

cost of the meal for healthy meal events, Johnson notes. And if you use commercial space that’s excluded from

eligible basis for healthy grocery stores and restaurants, you can charge rent to the provider to use those spaces,

says Johnson.

Be sure to run any fees by your attorney before you start charging them to residents or service providers. For more

information on how to use common areas and community spaces for food access programs without risking tax

credits, see the following articles on our website: “Follow Six Rules to Avoid Converting Common Areas into

Commercial Space,” “Don't Allow Commercial Use of Community Room,” and “Offer Common Area Services without

Risking Tax Credits.”

Considerations for Starting or Hosting CSAs

and Other Bulk Food Delivery Programs

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and other onsite bulk food delivery programs are a great way to get

fresh produce and other healthy food to interested residents who lack healthy food access. But they require a

good deal of planning and managing to make sure they operate smoothly and successfully, says Jean Zosel,

executive director at Garden City Harvest in Missoula, Mont., which runs an onsite farm and CSA program for

tax credit residents. Here are key topics to consider when starting or hosting a CSA or other bulk food delivery

programs.

1. Finding partners. Find partner food organizations or technical assistance to help determine resident

interest and preferences, organize and launch the CSA, find farmers, and help find a pricing that works for

your site. In New York City, Just Food is an organization that gives technical support to people and

organizations that want to start a CSA.

2. Finding farms to supply the CSA. Tax credit sites that have onsite farms sometimes run their own

CSAs for residents. For example, the farm at Blackhawk has a few affordable CSA shares for interested

residents. But most sites have to find a farmer growing a diverse and season-long array of produce willing to

bring the harvest to the site on a regular basis.

3. Pricing. CSAs can be quite expensive, often several hundred dollars for the whole season. But some

CSAs make it affordable for low-income residents by using a sliding scale price based on income level, where

more expensive CSA shares subsidize lower-priced shares, says Zosel. And in some cities, you can find an

increasing number of affordable CSAs specifically for low-income residents where organizers get grants and

donations to support the farmer’s costs, let residents pay with SNAP, or let them pay on a weekly basis

instead of a lump sum.

4. Recruiting members and volunteers. It’s important to recruit members before the growing season

begins so the farmer can know how much to grow for the season and so weekly deliveries run smoothly. If

you work with an existing CSA provider to add a delivery location to your site, the provider often has flyers

and membership information for prospective resident members and can help you recruit members and

volunteers. But if you don’t work with an existing CSA or partner with a technical advisor who specializes in

setting up CSAs, you’ll need to do all the recruiting yourself. This includes drafting a membership agreement

that spells out the amount and type of produce or other food in the CSA delivery, the pick-up location, the

length of the season, the price and methods of payment (up-front, weekly, SNAP accepted, etc.), and

volunteer requirements for members. Some CSAs require members to volunteer at least one week during the

season, but you’ll still need to find a group of regular volunteers or use staff to help communicate with the

farmer, run the distribution site, and do other tasks to manage the CSA on a weekly basis.

5. Choosing a site distribution location. A community room can be a good location for drop-off and pick-

up by residents, but wherever you choose, be sure that the location has an unloading area to pull up in a truck

with the food, with few, if any, stairs from the unloading area for volunteers or staff to bring the food to the

distribution site. The site should have room to sort the produce for easy distribution and easy clean up, with

vegetable bins, tables, sign-in sheets, new member forms, and a refrigerator if the CSA contains meat or dairy

or if the drop-off takes place much earlier than the residents’ designated pick-up time.

6. Including nutrition and cooking education. Some residents with long-term lack of healthy food

access may have never seen many of the fruits and vegetables in the CSA. CSA organizers and other

community partners can help provide nutrition information, cooking demos, and recipes to help members

learn how to use and cook their weekly produce.

Healthy Food Access and Funding Resources

Many food access programs don’t cost much for you to run, especially if you work with outside partners, but here are

examples of sources that you can use to fund food access programs at your site:

Grants from partners, local government, health, community gardening, educational, and environmental

organizations;

Private and corporate donations;

In-kind donations of food, kitchen equipment, educational materials, and volunteer labor;

Sales of produce and food products from urban farm and CSAs;

Fundraising events;

HUD grants -- the HUD website provides a frequently updated list of funding opportunities

at:www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/mfh/nnw/fundingopps/fundingopps.cfm.

Here’s a list of websites with more information about starting, managing, and funding your site’s food access

programs:

American Community Gardening Association: www.communitygarden.org

HUD Community Development Block Grant

program: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/communitydevelopment/prog

rams

HUD Neighborhood Networks: www.neighborhoodnetworks.org

Housing Services Corporation: www.hscorp.ca/our-programs-and-services/social-innovation-and-

partnerships/seed)

Enterprise Green Communities Best Practices Series: Access to Fresh, Local

Foods:www.enterprisecommunity.com/resources/ResourceDetails?ID=0088705#sthash.6pEtL5da.dpuf

Enterprise Green Communities Fresh Local Food Access Toolkit — New

York:www.enterprisecommunity.com/resources/ResourceDetails?ID=74962.pdf

Food at Home: Affordable Housing as a Platform to Overcome Nutritional

Challenges:www.enterprisecommunity.com/resources/ResourceDetails?ID=0091729#

Food Share Toronto: www.foodshare.net/Program-Resources

Just Food: www.justfood.org/csa/csa-resource-center

HUD Green Homes and

Communities: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/about/conplan/greenho

mes

Policy Link’s Healthy Food Access Portal: www.healthyfoodaccess.org

W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Food and Community: www.wkkf.org/what-we-do/healthy-kids/food-and-community

About the Author

This Special Issue of the Insider was written by Carolyn Zezima, Esq., who is the president of NYC Foodscape

(www.nycfoodscape.com), and a consultant with a track record of grass-rooting and managing organizations in the

nonprofit sector. She has worked with food and farming enterprises and food policy organizations in Chicago and

New York to promote urban agriculture and regional farming, including founding The Talking Farm, “The Farm with

Something to Say,” an urban farming and educational enterprise in Evanston, Ill.

While in Illinois, Zezima also served as director of Chicago’s Green City Market and on food policy councils that

helped to create new community farmers markets and draft and pass legislation, such as the Illinois Food, Farm and

Jobs Act.

Zezima serves on numerous farming- and food-related committees and boards, including American Farmland Trust’s

Farmland Advisors program, Harvest Home Farmers Markets, Partnership for a Healthier Manhattan, and NYC Food

Forum. She is currently co-chair of the Food Systems Network NYC policy committee and has co-drafted several

food policy and sustainability proposals, including food policy recommendations to include in the revised

PlaNYC2030, and the Recipe for the Future of Food in New York City.

Zezima also practiced law after graduating from Duke University School of Law, and is a licensed member of the New

York, California, and Illinois bars. She can be reached at nycfoodscape@gmail.com or (847) 507-1785. She thanks

the following experts for contributing their comments to this article:

Michael Buonocore: Executive Director, Home Forward, 135 SW Ash St., Portland, OR 97204;www.homeforward.org.

Shaina Burkett: Human Services Program Specialist, Denver Housing Authority, CONNECTIONS @Mariposa, 1089 Osage St.,

Denver, CO 80204; www.denverhousing.org.

Ron Clewer: CEO, Rockford Housing Authority, 23 S. Winnebago St., Rockford, IL 61102;www.rockfordha.org.

Carolyn Crouch-Robinson: Director of Residential Services, Project H.O.M.E., 1515 Fairmount Ave., Philadelphia, PA

19130; www.projecthome.org.

Aniko Drlik-Muehleck: Community Planning Fellow, Home Forward, 135 SW Ash St., Portland, OR 97204;www.homeforward.org.

Debbie Field: Executive Director, FoodShare Toronto, 90 Croatia St., Toronto, ON M6H 1K9;www.foodshare.net.

Danica Hoehn: Program Director, Angelic Organics Learning Center, 110 N. First St., Rockford, Il

61107;www.learngrowconnect.org.

A.J. Johnson: President, A.J. Johnson Consulting Services, Inc., 3521 Frances Berkeley, Williamsburg, VA 23188; www.ajjcs.net.

Bomee Jung, MCP BPI-MFBA: Deputy Director, New York Office, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., One Whitehall St., 11th Fl.,

New York, NY 10004; www.enterprisecommunity.org.

Jan Kasameyer: Resident Services Program Supervisor, Home Forward, 135 SW Ash St., Portland, OR

97204; www.homeforward.org.

L. Beth Keel, M.A.: Sustainability Initiatives Liaison, San Antonio Housing Authority, 818 S. Flores, San Antonio, TX

78204; www.saha.org/NewhousingM/housingmatters11/health.html.

Damon McIntyre: Denver Housing Authority, CONNECTIONS @Mariposa, 1089 Osage St., Denver, CO

80204; www.denverhousing.org.

Jean Zosel: Executive Director, Garden City Harvest, P.O. Box 205, Missoula, MT 59806;www.gardencityharvest.org.

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