Interview highlights
On what a food desert is defined as
Sabina Matos: Food deserts are communities that don’t have access to grocery stores that provide them access to fresh food. An example of this is Woonsocket, a community, city that only has access to one supermarket. What we’re trying to do is to make sure that more independent grocery stores have the opportunity to open in places that, right now, have been designated as a food desert.
On the need to reduce the number of food deserts in Rhode Island
Matos: What’s happening right now is that big grocery stores, big chains, as many of them are owned by multinational corporations, whenever they decide to close down a store because they’re not making as much money as they like to make in that particular store, they shut down. When they sell the property, they put a restriction on it – a covenant – that says that another grocery store cannot go in its place. This is what is causing the number of food deserts in our communities to keep growing.
Woonsocket is a good example of that. In Woonsocket right now, you can find more properties that have a restricted covenant in place that prohibits them from having another grocery store than the grocery stores that you can find available. This is a problem. We have to make sure that we stop any future property from getting this covenant added to it.
Some of the big supermarkets have said that they have some plans of closing down stores. If we don’t do anything right now and stop this from happening, we’re going to have more locations here in the state of Rhode Island. They’re going to have added that covenant, and it’s going to stop us from having the opportunity of getting new investors into our community and new independent supermarkets opening in our community.
On why she’s supporting legislation to combat food deserts in Rhode Island
Matos: I’m taking this up because the prices of groceries are too expensive right now. People are struggling to be able to buy food and put food on their table. That there are so many things that go into play in making grocery prices expensive. One of them is the lack of competition. When things like this are done, when restricted covenants are put in place, what they’re looking for is to stop competition. They don’t want to have competitors come into the market area that they’re leaving and in many instances, they’re abandoning these communities. You have seen cases in which they close down a supermarket and you don’t see anything else going into that building for years. And there are people that would like to come to this community, help rebuild the community, invest. They’re not able to do it because of these restricted covenants.
On other grocery price-related legislation she’s supporting
Matos: As part of this grocery price package of bills that I’m supporting, there are others. One of them is making sure that stores that are providing coupons, they don’t do it only electronically. What happens is there are seniors that may have a smartphone, but they don’t know how to use all the features of it. Many of them don’t have a smartphone, and more and more we’re finding that stores have these deals, special deals, but in order to access them, you need to have an electronic device in order to be able to access them. So one of the bills is making sure that the stores are providing the discounts in the store. Rep. Tom Noret is a sponsor of this bill.
