Portland Food Deserts

A food desert is a location in a city where a neighborhood doesn't have adequate access to grocery stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, or any the location where food is purchasable. These "food deserts" are most prevalent in low-income neighborhoods. Lack of grocery stores in a close proximity can make it extremely difficult for people without cars or people with disability to get a sufficient amount of food. It is important to identify these locations to locate areas where grocery stores need to be opened so that people can have access to food, a human necessity.

These grocery stores highlighted on this map of Portland are the larger, more general stores such as Whole Foods, Fred Meyers, Walmart and Safeway. The location of these stores are fairly evenly disbursed across the city. This makes it easier for people to get access to food, especially when there are smaller, more local stores in between the larger ones.

The darker blue sections of the map show the higher income section of Portland, while gray is slightly lower, white lower than gray but still high, and green the lowest income sections. The west side of Portland is the wealthiest, as the blue areas are clustered together in a crescent-like shape along the waterfront and west hills. The lowest income areas are in North Portland as well as more east towards Gresham. The location of the grocery stores in those locations are still fairly evenly spread out, however, in East Portland the amount of grocery stores is more sparse, at least in this data set.

Contrary to Portland's large homeless population, Portland's unemployment rate is fairly average. The gray areas on the map are below the national unemployment rate, which is around 5%. These gray areas dominate the map, however, the purple sections are much higher at around 7%-11% unemployed. These purple sections line up very well with the lower income sections on the map above, as households with one or less employed inhabitants typically have a lower income. The grocery store locations are still the same, and similar to the map above, people in areas with higher unemployment rate still have access to a store within close proximity.

In conclusion, there is no concrete evidence of any food deserts in Portland. Throughout the city there is a variety of larger stores, such as Whole Foods, Safeway and Fred Meyer, but there are also many smaller locally-owned stores that are easily accessible to people of all economic and employment status that are not on the maps provided above. Also, Portland's average income is much higher than the nations average income, which means there are less areas with lower income. The areas outside of Portland would be much more useful to look at because the more impoverished people are clustered outside of the urban areas because of Portland's steep housing costs.