A recap of the week’s equity news

“Midwest floods expose aging, weak protection,” - Chicago Tribune

With rumbling force, the Cedar River on Wednesday ripped through the eastern Iowa city of Cedar Rapids toward a historic crest while unleashing floodwaters into businesses and homes.

With thunderstorms looming, thousands of people quickly evacuated the downtown area as state officials warned the levee barely holding back the river could burst overnight and inundate city streets with water for miles around.

 ”LA can benefit from a state bill that doles out money based on smart-growth ideas,” - New York Times

Environmental leadership, or growth and opportunity? For three decades, it seemed that California could only have one or the other: Responsible stewardship of our resources coupled with slow growth — and a resulting shortage of housing and jobs; or continued economic power — with the degradation brought by traffic and sprawl.

Now the state is finding its way toward a model in which environmentalism and growth complement each other. Lawmakers weighed in with AB 32, the landmark bill to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Voters approved infrastructure bonds such as Proposition 1C, which encourages builders to focus on transit corridors or empty or degraded spots in urban areas.

“The Bubble: How homeowners’ missed mortgage payments set off widespread problems and woke up the Fed.,” - Washington Post

The mortgage executives who gathered in a blond-wood conference room in Southern California studied their internal reports with growing alarm.

More and more borrowers were falling behind on their monthly payments almost as soon as they moved into their new homes, indicating that some of them never really had the money to begin with. “Nobody had models for that,” said David E. Zimmer, then one of the executives at People’s Choice, a subprime lender based in Irvine. “Nobody had predicted people going into default in their first three mortgage payments.”

“Report faults F.D.A. action for safe food,” - New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration has failed to carry out much of its own plan to protect the nation’s food supply, Congressional investigators say in a report that is to be released on Thursday.

The report, by investigators for the Government Accountability Office, is expected to tell the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday that the agency has done little to put into operation its “food protection plan,” which the F.D.A. released in November.

Via the Atlantic’s Matt Yglesias, here’s an interesting proposal from what Matt describes as the Green Party candidate for Paris Mayor which would “create a generous program along the lines of food stamps here in the U.S. but specifically targeted at the purchase of fresh produce.” Since my French starts and stops at “papier mache,” I’ll have to trust him on the translation.

California made a major stride in this direction just last week, when the state’s Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program decided to start offering “fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and soy products to the 1.4 million low-income Californians the program serves.” PolicyLink President Judith Bell was on-hand for the announcement.

Britain’s mega-supermarket chain Tesco has begun trying to ingratiate itself into the US with a dramatically different marketing scheme. Rather than focus on the massive, 50,000-square-foot supermarket strategy of traditional American chains, Tesco has started building about 60 smaller “Fresh and Easy” stores in LA, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The idea is to put these smaller stores — roughly 10,000 square feet — directly into low- and moderate-income communities, to give residents a place nearby to buy fresh, organic food often for a fraction of the cost. So far, the response has been mixed from customers, who are unfamiliar with the tiny stores and their relatively bland interiors.

But as PolicyLink president Judith Bell writes in a letter in today’s edition of USA Today, equity advocates should applaud any private sector effort to bring fresh and healthy foods into underserved neighborhoods:

The arrival of the United Kingdom grocery chain Tesco in the USA is a welcome sign that the private sector is waking up to the harmful void of fresh foods in our low-income communities (”British Invasion hits grocery stores,” Cover story, Money, Monday).

Too many poor communities lack a supermarket or any other place to buy fresh food. Residents are forced to make do with the preservative-laden and sugar-heavy foods at their local convenience stores or fast food outlets. Is it a surprise that low-income communities are hardest hit with the nation’s obesity and diabetes crises? Tesco’s plan for small stores in low-income communities won’t solve America’s health woes on its own. But getting fresh foods into the hands of all people is a great step in that direction.

For more information on how to encourage healthy food choices in your community, check out the PolicyLink report “Healthy Food, Healthy Communities”

(Photo by Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)