Housing
3 articles
Renters vs. Owners: Housing Tenure and Grocery Access
Renter-dominated tracts have better grocery access: shorter distances (0.58 vs. 0.94 mi), lower food desert rates (8.4% vs. 18.2%). But this reflects urban geography, not housing policy—and renters have higher vulnerability despite better access.
Better Access, Higher Vulnerability: What 9,033 California Tracts Reveal
The USDA's food desert framework assumes that distance to grocery stores is a primary barrier to food access.[1] Federal policy has directed resources toward bringing stores closer to underserved communities, from the Healthy Food Financing Initiative to state-level incentive programs.[2] Our earlier analysis of 7 Bay Area and major metro counties suggested this framing may be backwards: the most vulnerable communities already had closer stores, not farther ones. But that finding was limited to
When Work Isn't Enough: What Census Data Reveals About Silicon Valley's Working Poor
In 57 census tracts across Santa Clara County, more than 60% of working-age adults are employed. These same tracts have poverty rates above 10%. This pattern, high employment alongside meaningful poverty, appears in neighborhoods home to 256,773 people. The correlation between employment rate and poverty rate across all 408 county tracts? r = -0.063, essentially zero. Since employment doesn't predict poverty in Silicon Valley, we should think about what Census wage and income data can show us.