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Dixie Perkins pulls a ticket from the red box to secure her place in line — number 41. A woman from inside the building shouts “27″ in English and again, in Spanish.
“Oh wow I got 20 more to go,” Perkins, 69, said. She walks to a bench and sits to wait.
About 15 other people wonder when their number will be called. They lean against the walls, sit in their cars, on benches or pace the sidewalk. They crane their heads to watch others who’ve waited their turn to walk inside and fill out a form before getting a cart to shop.
Community Food Pantry in McKinney sits west of State Highway 5, just outside the city’s food desert, an area where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food, and a significant number of residents are more than 1 mile in urban areas or 10 miles in rural areas from the nearest supermarket, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). These areas often have large proportions of households with low incomes and inadequate access to transportation.
McKinney’s food desert covers the majority of the 75069 ZIP code in East McKinney. According to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas — where population data is based on the 2010 census — it’s the largest food desert by area and population in Collin County, which is also one of the wealthiest counties in the state behind Midland, Travis and Kendall counties, according to consumer finance website SmartAsset. It identifies the wealthiest counties by comparing investment income, property value and per capita income and calculating each county’s median home value using IRS Statistics of Income tax information, National Association of Realtors and Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
A few restaurants, two Dollar Generals and fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Baker’s Drive-In and Jack in the Box — are located in the desert. The closest supermarket is an El Rancho Supermercado, which has limited options and high prices, said Justin Beller, a District 1 McKinney City Council member, who shops at El Rancho for certain Hispanic grocery items but doesn’t rely on the store for staple foods.
Area leaders working to mitigate the impacts of the food desert say the disparity — a large food desert in the midst of one of the state’s wealthiest counties — comes from a lack of awareness that the desert even exists, as need is overshadowed by the overall wealth of the area, and attracting grocery stores has been a challenge as East McKinney has historically lagged behind the city in development and population.
Masked need
Ronisha Trammell sometimes eats chips for dinner so that she has enough food for her two kids. Like many who live in the food desert, she often wonders where the next meal is coming from.
About 11% of the city’s overall population, or 14,497 people, lived in the two low-income, low-access census tracts that made up the food desert in 2010. Over the past decade, McKinney’s population has grown by over 64,000 people, meaning the number of those living in the food desert has likely grown too.
At a recent mobile food distribution organized by area nonprofit Community Lifeline Center, Trammell got almonds, eggs, milk, potatoes, onions and a box of canned goods. She was close to the front in a line of cars that snaked through the McKinney ISD Stadium parking lot. The nonprofit was expecting to serve about 100 families.
Instead, about 500 cars pulled up that afternoon, and food options dwindled to onions or almonds.
With pandemic-era emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits ending this March, along with inflation and rent increases, need has exploded, said Michael Schwerin, executive director of Community Lifeline Center.
In 2020 the organization distributed 750,000 pounds of food, but in 2022, it topped 1 million pounds. Schwerin said the majority of families it serves live in the food desert.
The need is clear, said Danelle Parker, who oversees Texas Health Resources’ community health improvement programs in Collin County. But with a poverty rate of 6.6%, the pocket of people who have the greatest need is often overshadowed by the overall wealthy population within the city.
For example, while McKinney’s median household income was $106,437 in 2021, compared with the state’s $67,321, the 75069 ZIP code in McKinney was ranked as having the highest need compared with other cities in Collin County when measuring food access correlated with economic and household hardship, according to the 2022 Food Insecurity Index, created by Conduent Healthy Communities Institute.
Parker said looking beyond the health equity index and the percent of those living below the poverty level to understand need and how a desert exists is key.
“That’s how you have a food desert, because it’s not something that’s highlighted,” said Parker. “The people that have need are not highlighted.”
Out of sight
After waiting 55 minutes to shop, Perkins fills her cart with bottles of water, a toilet paper roll, and cans of whole kernel corn, Golden Hominy, green beans, pink salmon and white chicken. She reads the label on a pack of gummy rabbits and adds it to the haul. From a small freezer at the end of the winding aisles, she grabs a boneless beef angus chuck for a roast she wants to cook.
The groceries are bagged and loaded into the car by Community Food Pantry volunteers while Perkins sits in the passenger seat. Like many in the area without transportation, she has to rely on her neighbor or rides from an on-demand voucher program operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
On the five-minute drive home, Perkins passes Arcade 92 Retro Arcade Bar + Kitchen, Koji Sushi and El Juarez Mexican, restaurants that border the west side of the food desert and mark the entrance of the city’s historic downtown where high-end restaurants, boutiques and wineries sprawl. Most who live in the desert can’t afford to eat here.
Later in the week, after her SNAP benefits become available, Perkins will catch another ride to Kroger on University Drive, where U.S. highways 75 and 380 intersect.
It’s in a shopping center — with a Walmart Supercenter, WinCo Foods and Sam’s Club — across from State Highway 5 and the food desert. About 3 miles south on 75 are a Trader Joe’s and an Albertsons. A Sprouts Farmers Market may also be coming to the southwest corner of 75 and Virginia Parkway, according to discussion during a Jan. 17 City Council meeting.
Because of the plethora of stores along 75, many area residents don’t realize that the food desert exists, said Joy Hinkelman, executive director of the Wellness Center for Older Adults, who has lived in West McKinney since 2007 and didn’t know a food desert existed in the city until 2018.
“I’m one of those individuals that hasn’t had the reason to go on the east side because everything I need, that I access is on the west side. ... If they [residents] don’t see it, then they’re not going to recognize it and acknowledge it,” Hinkelman said.
Is a grocery store the answer?
While there are no zoning barriers to developing a grocery store along State Highway 5/McDonald Street or U.S. Highway 380, preliminary data from Retail Connection — a company hired by the city to pull market data — shows that the customer base and the spending power isn’t there for a grocery store to be located, said assistant city manager Kim Flom.
Stores like Aldi and neighborhood Walmarts don’t see the area along Highway 5 as a viable service area: Until recently, there has been little development pressure east of Highway 5. The highway is not heavily trafficked; the east fork of the Trinity River limits space and the area has a limited demographic that it serves, Beller said.
“[Grocery stores] looked to 75 and 380 and decided they could serve the population from there,” Beller said. “They’re chasing traffic counts and population demographics.”
City leaders say a brick-and-mortar store might not be the answer to mitigating the impact of the food desert.
Beller pointed to leaning on the nonprofit sector to help provide better price, convenience and selection through using existing retail facilities and distribution models.
Flom said that the data from the USDA is an important indicator, but the city needs to “take a deeper dive” to combine the USDA information about the food desert with local-level information.
“This will provide a comprehensive view that will lead to tailored recommendations to best meet the needs of McKinney residents,” Flom said. “In areas where the private market does not produce a grocery store, other things like food distributions, community gardening, farmers markets and surplus food sharing have been shown to alleviate food desert issues.”
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