New York City’s primary tool here is the Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program, launched in 2009. FRESH offers zoning bonuses and tax incentives to developers who build full-line supermarkets in underserved areas, and it’s had real, measurable output: at least 30 of a planned 51 stores have opened across all five boroughs as of 2024, now serving roughly 1.2 million New Yorkers within half a mile of a FRESH-supported store, with the program expanded in 2021 to cover more Bronx community districts specifically.

What’s honest to say, though, is that opening a store isn’t the same as closing a health gap. A 2015 study of two Bronx neighborhoods found no measurable effect on residents’ diet or health outcomes after a FRESH supermarket opened nearby, and the broader academic literature on similar programs elsewhere shows mixed, generally modest effects at best. Access to a supermarket doesn’t automatically change what a family can afford to buy there, how much time they have to shop and cook, or decades of established habit — a new store changes the food landscape, but it isn’t, on its own, a health intervention.

Smaller-scale efforts fill in some of the gap FRESH doesn’t reach on its own — bodega-produce partnerships that stock more fresh items in existing corner stores, community gardens through initiatives like GreenThumb, and mutual-aid food programs that emerged especially during the pandemic. None of these are a complete fix either, but together they represent a more honest picture of the current approach: a mix of real infrastructure investment, incremental community-level work, and a genuine, unresolved gap between the two.