Houston Leadership Vacuum: $1.7MM to solve an undefined problem.

Even after reading today's story on Houston's $1.7MM donation to a private business in order to build a grocery store I have no idea what a food desert is.  What I do know is that the city is now in the business of giving large amounts of cash to businesses that are high risk.  This during a time when the roads are rapidly descending into moonscape territory and it's almost a flip of a coin whether or not your fire, crime or medical emergency will be responded to in a timely manner, or at all.

In the run-up to the passing of the last city budget Mayor Parker moaned often and loudly about $1MM in spending by City Councilmembers who set up a slush-fund to reward pet-projects in their districts. Apparently it wasn't the amount of spending that Parker had an issue with but that it didn't go to one of her primary priorities: doing things that polish her resume for a planned state wide run.

Here's the area in question via Google Maps, with locations that (admittedly) are loosely considered grocery stores marked:

As near as I can tell, there's an HEB (with fresh produce) around 5000 feet (just under a mile) from the current location, and a Fiesta food mart about 2 miles away.  There's also an organic market, and several small produce sellers approximately 2 miles away.

On the other side of 288 (not pictured) there's a fairly large Kroger as well.  Again, this Kroger is about a mile away from the new store. 

By means of comparison, I compared roughly the same geographical area in two relatively well-off areas of Houston and found the following:

 

In Copperfield, a suburb to the Northwest of Houston, there were even fewer traditional "grocery stores" within approximately the same geographical area.  Just to the South there is a Sprouts, and there's a Kroger to the North. 

Then we get to the Heights:

Again you see just about the same distribution of grocery-type stores as you find in South Union.

One would guess that the argument is that residents in Copperfield and the Heights are more likely to have vehicles that can make the grocery run for them.  OK, I'll give you that but, this doesn't mean there's a food desert as much as it means Metro is creating transit deserts that aren't allowing residents of these areas to commute to grocery stores and buy the healthy produce they need.

What's not being discussed by what currently passes for leadership in Houston is that Metro is on the verge of making these transit deserts worse. Anytime you create a plan to reduce coverage but increase ridership, as Metro is currently doing, then you're admitting that there are going to be increasingly large areas of the region with massively reduced coverage.  In areas such as Copperfield and the Heights, this would be more of a nuisance than an actual problem. In poor areas such as South Union, this is potentially very harmful.

Look how much the connecting service is reduced from the old system:

To the new:

 

Before we go on spending $1.7MM to rid ourselves of a problem that seemingly doesn't exist, let's focus on a problem that does. Namely, a group of New Urbanist devotees doing their level best to make it harder for the poor to use transit (that they are dependent upon most) to run chores, buy groceries, get to employment centers in favor of allowing the wealthy to use the transit system as a plaything.

We've been told for years that Houston having a workable light-rail system is needed for us to be World Class(y). There's nothing world class about hanging the poorest among us out to dry so that the so-called creative class can feel good about themselves (seeing as they don't have to interact with the rabble) as they listen to their music on iPads, iPhones and iPods, riding trains and buses on their way to the coffee shop.

A real leader would understand how this all works together, and would promote policies that make sense when viewed as a whole. In Houston's current leadership vacuum we're given political pay-offs masked as solutions while the administration obsesses over our bathroom habits.