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Oakland Post

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These Are the Contributing Factors

By Magaly Muñoz

On a recent trip to the grocery store in West Oakland, single mom Neemaka Tucker contemplated what’s more important to her family’s needs –  expensive fresh produce or cheap instant ramen noodles.

“I’m trying to teach my kids to eat healthy, but then my pocket is like, ‘I’m broke’. Getting the processed foods is going to fill you up faster, even though it’s not good for your body,” Tucker said.

Bay Area residents are spending over $100 more a month on groceries than they were pre-pandemic. Those higher costs are straining wallets and forcing families to choose cheap over healthy, possibly contributing to more health problems. These problems are disproportionately affecting people in East and West Oakland, in neighborhoods primarily of low-income families of color.

Oakland residents are experiencing more health problems linked to poor diets, like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease than before the pandemic, particularly in neighborhoods of East and West Oakland, data shows.

“We see a direct relationship between what we eat and medical problems. What we eat affects our weight, our blood pressure and all those things circle back and have an effect on your diseased state,” said Dr. Walter Acuña, a family physician at Oakland Kaiser Medical.

According to data by UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, about 1 in 10 adults in East Oakland neighborhoods experience food insecurity. That’s twice as many people than in most other parts of the city.

Oakland residents’ health concerns are growing

For this story, we focused on eight of the 12 ZIP codes in Oakland, those pertaining to East and West Oakland. The ZIP codes include 94601, 94603, 94505, 94606, 94607, 94612, 94619, and 94621.  We chose to concentrate on these specific areas, known as the Oakland Flatlands, due to its longstanding history of extremely low-income households and racial inequalities compared to ZIP codes in the Oakland Hills.

According to UCLA research, about one out of every five adults under 65 in these areas of East Oakland reported poor or fair health. But these problems weren’t isolated to East Oakland. About one in six adults under 65 reported poor or fair health in areas of West Oakland, like the 94607 ZIP codes.

A handful of ZIP codes (94601, 94603, 94605, 94621) in East Oakland also have the poorest health outcomes of any area in the city. Residents there experience the highest rates of obesity and adult diabetes.

UCLA data shows that there has been a two percent increase in the number of adults diagnosed with diabetes in West Oakland (ZIP code 94607) since 2017- 2018. An estimated 11.8% of adults in 94607 in 2021-22 said they had diabetes, whereas 9.8% reported it several years before.

But the problem is more significant, only a few miles away.

In the 94621 neighborhood in East Oakland, an estimated 16.6% of adult residents reported having diabetes in 2021-2022, and the neighboring ZIPs averaged about 15%, according to UCLA data. 2017-2018 data show that only 11% reported a diabetes diagnosis in the 94621, a 5.6% change from recent numbers. The ZIP code estimates are higher than the states’, county’s, and city estimates—11%, 12.4%, and 12.3%, respectively.

Doctors working with Oakland and the larger Alameda County area are seeing an increase in the number of people coming to their offices with chronic health issues in the last few years.

Acuña said he’s frequently treating more and more adults with diabetes and hypertension.

Patients often tell him that it’s easier to afford unhealthy, cheap food than it is to afford the things that are going to make them feel better and stay healthy, he said

Dr. Steven Chen, Chief Medical Officer of Alameda County’s Recipe4Health, said that he’s seeing more kids across the region suffering from obesity, or adults on the brink of developing chronic illnesses, than in previous years.

“Chronic disease is a big epidemic. What’s the root of it? I think food is a big component,” Chen said.

He has seen evidence of improved health when people have access to better food. People with Type 2 diabetes experience a boost in metabolic and sugar management to healthy levels, and those with high blood pressures experience normal numbers.

Recipe4Health is a county-wide program that uses food-based interventions to treat and prevent chronic conditions, address food insecurity, and improve health and racial equity. The program provides up to 12 weeks of groceries for people who are at risk or are experiencing food insecurity.

It’s important for public sectors to have these kinds of investments locally because the results are tangible, he said.

“If our values are that no one gets left behind and that everyone should have an equal opportunity to health and health equity, then we need always to ensure that we are serving those communities that often are left behind,” Chen said.

Experiencing food insecurity in Oakland

Unfortunately, healthy food is becoming increasingly difficult for Oakland residents to access. Over the last five months, The Oakland Post heard from over 50 residents about their struggles finding and affording healthy food. We visited food banks, talked with people at markets and food distribution events, and distributed an online survey.

We learned that residents are travelling to other nearby cities to get cheaper groceries, financial assistance programs like CalFresh are challenging to navigate, wages are low, and food is getting more expensive while the quality appears to be dropping.

Andres, who asked us not to use his last name due to his undocumented status, said he often relies on food distribution from organizations like the Street Level Health Project for his weekly groceries. He wouldn’t be able to eat complete meals otherwise, due to the lack of consistent employment at his car washing job during the winter months.

With eight people living under one roof and only three adults contributing to the household income, he said things are tight.

“During these months, we’re always backed up on paying our bills, including rent, and we’re trying to do more with what little that we have, which is not much,” Andres said.

Andres’ biggest complaint about grocery shopping is the lack of fresh and healthy food that is affordable and good quality. He’s been to food banks and grocery stores where the produce rots within a day or two of receiving it, forcing him to buy fast food in order to feed his family.

Down the street at the Unity Council’s weekly grocery distribution, Mayra Segovia, a single woman in her 50s, said she visits this location almost every week to get food. Her fixed income on Social Security makes it difficult to afford her basic necessities.

Segovia said she receives CalFresh funding to pay for her groceries, but the almost $300 assistance is not enough to get her through the month, so she gets creative. She often does favors for local vendors in exchange for meals. Even with the Social Security checks of a little over $1,000 a month and other resources like subsidized housing, the cost of living is going up. She’s blaming the government for their contribution to the problem.

“We’re not all rich like Donald Trump and all those corrupt politicians, we don’t have that much money like that,” Segovia said.

Social service assistance is falling short

Several people we spoke with said financial food assistance like CalFresh isn’t supplementing the gaps in their budgets.

Neemaka Tucker, mom of two elementary-aged kids, said she receives $123 a month from CalFresh, yet she’s spending almost $600 on groceries at the store. She feels like she should be getting more assistance, especially considering her lower, single income. “I’m appreciative [of the CalFresh funds] that I get anything because every little bit helps, but it’s still not enough for my family,” Tucker said.

A lack of grocery store options in West Oakland has also made it even harder to get food on the table, Tucker said.

There are more convenience stores than grocery stores within walking distance to her home on the northeast side of West Oakland, and the prices seem to be exacerbated because of their limited food stock, Tucker said. A gallon of milk at the store could run her up to $3.80, but at the local convenience market, it’s nearly $6.

“I just find that the majority of the money that I’m spending is on the travel to get the food, then on the food itself,” Tucker said.

Healthy groceries are a necessity to manage Tucker’s health. She is diabetic and has high blood pressure, so eating and buying fresh produce is important because keeping her symptoms at bay is a must for her health. It’s been difficult to get what she needs for her body to maintain her chronic health problems because she often battles with lack of affordability of what she’s buying, she said.

“I find myself trying to figure out what’s healthy for each person and then have enough of it so we all can [eat well],” Tucker said. “Back in the day, bread and potatoes used to be staples to get your kids full, but food like that makes me sick because that’s too much [carbohydrates] since I have diabetes.”

Both her kids are athletes who also need healthy food. She’s finding that even though her kids don’t eat meat, which tends to be expensive, she’s still spending more than she’d like to on fruit and vegetables.

In Oakland, the local investment is low

In the last year, the city has cut grants to nonprofits like Meals on Wheels, which serves 3,000 hungry seniors, and Street Level Health Project, which provides groceries and meals to undocumented day laborers. Tax measures, like the Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax, were intended to help decrease the food and health crisis but are also not being managed in the way Oakland residents voted for, according to community leaders and advisory board members. The majority of the tax money is going towards funding city agencies.

The Oakland Post contacted city and county officials several times for comment but did not get a response.

Across the Bay Area, San Francisco is investing millions to address food insecurity through a pilot program that establishes free grocery stores in food desert districts. Shoppers of the pilot market said they have seen a positive change to the way they feed their families and how much they’re able to save every month.

Oakland resident PC, who chose to use an abbreviated version of his name to protect his privacy, said he’d be interested in seeing a market like the one in San Francisco because it would alleviate the tight budget he has for himself.

PC said he’s had some unpleasant experiences with food distribution workers being rude to residents waiting for grocery bags. “The line is already long as it is and can sometimes feel shameful when you’re going through hard times,” PC said, so an option to get free food in a setting that resembles a market would be ideal.

The garden lead for West Oakland’s People’s Programs, ab banks, helps deliver fresh produce from a local garden to households in the projects, because the need for healthier options has been particularly high in recent years, they said.

People’s Program serves around 170 people in the 94607 area with groceries, along with a mobile health clinic and free breakfast program. Their goal is to serve a community that already deals with its own set of disadvantages, and looks to show people that not everything needs to contribute to a bigger gain and people have the right to use the local land to grow the food they need.

Banks said they see firsthand what the lack of investment in West Oakland has done to folks: homelessness, priced out living situations, environmental racism, and lack of food access.

They explained that although they feel a duty and a calling to the work at People’s Program to help an underserved neighborhood, they questioned how the city is pouring millions of dollars towards finding solutions to Oakland’s biggest problems but no significant change has happened yet. banks said there are basic necessities that should be birthrights and not restricted to what the government thinks people need.

“[The investment] is not enough. There’s no access to fair housing, not enough access to food, not enough access to healthcare. But that’s just not specific to Oakland, that’s a United States problem,” banks said.

Reporter Magaly Muñoz produced this story as part of a series as a 2024 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Data Fellow and Engagement Grantee.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

By Robert Harris and Richard Fuentes
Special to The Post

The City of Oakland is facing a number of urgent challenges, from housing and public safety to a pressing need for jobs and economic development. One of us, Robert Harris, supported the November recall vote that removed Mayor Sheng Thao from office. Meanwhile, Richard Fuentes believed the recall was the wrong strategy to tackle Oakland’s challenges. 

Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why.  

Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change.

The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress. 

Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not. 

During her three decades in the state Legislature and Congress, Lee made public safety a priority, securing funding for police and firefighters in Oakland, delivering $15.8 million in community safety funding, and more. Today, she has a plan for making Oakland safer. It starts with making sure police are resourced, ready, and on patrol to stop the most dangerous criminals on our streets. 

Oakland residents and business owners are feeling the impact of too many assaults, smash/grabs, retail thefts, and home robberies. Lee will increase the number of police on the streets, make sure they are focused on the biggest threats, and invest in violence prevention and proven alternatives that prevent crime and violence in the first place.

In addition, on day one, Barbara Lee will focus on Oakland’s business community, creating an advisory cabinet of business owners and pushing to ensure Oakland can attract and keep businesses of all sizes.

The other top issue facing Oakland is housing and homelessness. As of May 2024, over 5,500 people were unhoused in the city. Oaklanders are just 25% of the population of Alameda County, but the city has 57% of the unhoused population.

Unhoused people include seniors, veterans, single women, women with children, people who suffer physical and mental illness, unemployed and undereducated people, and individuals addicted to drugs. Some are students under 18 living on the streets without their parents or a guardian. Research shows that 53% of Oakland’s homeless population is Black. 

Starting on her first day in office, Lee will use her national profile and experience to bring new resources to the city to reduce homelessness and expand affordable housing. And she will forge new public/private partnerships and collaboration between the City, Alameda County, other public agencies, and local nonprofits to ensure that Oakland gets its fair share of resources for everything from supportive services to affordable housing.

Besides a public safety and housing crisis, Oakland has a reputational crisis at hand. Too many people locally and nationally believe Oakland does not have the ability to tackle its problems.

Lee has the national reputation and the relationships she can use to assert a new narrative about our beloved Oakland – a vibrant, diverse, and culturally rich city with a deep history of activism and innovation.

Everyone remembers how Lee stood up for Oakland values as the only member of Congress not to authorize the disastrous Iraq War in 2001.  She has led the fight in Congress for ethics reform and changes to the nation’s pay-to-play campaign finance laws.

Lee stands alone among the candidates for mayor as a longtime champion of honest, transparent, and accountable government—and she has the reputation and the skills to lead an Oakland transformation that puts people first.

The past few years have been a trying period for our hometown.

Robert Harris supported the recall because of Thao’s decision to fire LeRonne Armstrong; her refusal to meet with certain organizations, such as the Oakland Branch of the NAACP; and the city missing the deadline for filing for a state grant to deal with serious retail thefts in Oakland. 

Richard Fuentes opposed the recall, believing that Oakland was making progress in reducing crime. The voters have had their say; now, it is time for us to move forward together and turn the page to a new era.

The two of us don’t agree on everything, but we agree on this: the next few years will be safer, stronger, and more prosperous if Oaklanders elect Barbara Lee as our next mayor on April 15.  

Robert Harris is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP.

Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57.

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