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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

"On Wednesday night, after a long work day, I got into my car"

That's his first mistake. Many (most?) people on food stamps can't afford a car. When you have little money for food, and you just got off the late shift of your second job, you have an even longer trip to the store, costing you more money.

Many of these people also may live in food deserts, where the most common type of store is a liquor store, followed maybe by a payday loan place and a gas station, or a bar. That's where I live anyway.

The closest grocery store is a very poorly maintained Aldi, and some people I know take a cab there and back once a week so they don't have to spend an hour or more traveling by bus.

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A lot of people on food stamps have no choice. They live in communities with little or no public transit infrastructure, and are forced to own and maintain a personal vehicle to get to and from their minimum-wage job. They live in places designed for a twentieth-century middle class supported by high-paying factory jobs and an infinite supply of petroleum.

How long is the taxi ride? And does the bus pass by any properly-maintained grocery stores? I'm really interested in this because the bus near me goes from suburbs to the middle of downtown in about half an hour, going by quite a few groceries. I didn't know it was possible to be that far from anywhere to buy food in a non-rural area.

It is absolutely a huge problem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Example: Total Trip: 85 minutes. This is 20 mintes each way, plus wait times. Bus comes 30 minutes on some routes, every 60 on others. A median wiat time would be 30-60 minutes for a round trip.

Yes, exactly. As funding gets pulled from public transit budgets, routes run less and less frequently.

In Florida (where I lived before Baltimore) it can take two and a half hours by bus to travel what takes around 20 minutes by car, but there the grocery stores are plentiful because of the immense urban sprawl.

In Baltimore and DC, there are literally almost no grocery stores in large swaths of the city, and not a lot of bus lines, because why would buses run often to places with no commerce? Some heavily traveled lines are between a half hour and an hour late, regularly.

This[1] is a map of food deserts in DC, which doesn't include Prince George's County (where most of the gentrification is pushing lower-to-middle-class [almost entirely black] families that can't afford living in DC anymore). Note that children are highly affected. There have been studies showing the lack of nutrition for children severely affects their development.

This[2] page from Baltimore City Planning lays out the numbers, in which 1/3 of Baltimore neighborhoods lie in a food desert (we're not as well off as DC's metro-accessible gentrified and developed areas; our metro is a joke). It's much easier to find Ramen noodles than it is a piece of fruit, or non-fried foods.

Walmart has been trying to break into DC and Baltimore for years, and is coming very close, partly on the argument that it would lessen food deserts. But the reality shows that they are pushing hard for long, large flat parking lots and super-centers, which 1. increases car traffic to an already congested urban neighborhoods, 2. removes store space and convenience for small businesses, which in turn 3. reduces the number of small businesses available to sell healthy food to locals, because they can just get everything at Walmart.

This results in no additional relief for the majority of residents in food deserts, while reducing the number of small businesses that could have provided better food service, and making traffic worse for public transit (which is already stressed).

The USDA had a map of food deserts from 2010 but it's not working for me. Maybe someone can download the data from here[3] and plot it in some JavaScript library?

[1] http://dcentric.wamu.org/2011/05/mapping-d-c-s-food-deserts/...

[2] http://www.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/...

[3] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-a...

Ever tried taking grocery shopping on the bus and then walking from bus to home? You really have to plan light or make multiple trips per week. Something like a gallon of OJ can really weight you down if you don't live right next to the bus stop.

Just curious, where do you live? I ask because the only time I've ever had to take taxis constantly was when visiting NYC, and it still wasn't cheap (although, cheaper than a taxi to the airport 10 mins away).

I'm curious as well: why did you take cabs constantly when visiting NYC? My take is that you enjoy the neighborhoods much more if you just walk, and when you just need to go from point A to point B fast, the subway works very well (with the exception of going from the museum mile to anywhere else).

When I visited, it was freezing cold outside, and half the people in my group were drunk. We were really just trying to get from one party to another, which is why we decided to take a cab, because it would require minimal effort.

Anyway, my point was that when you have a limit of about $30 per week for groceries, you probably can't afford to take a cab there and back.

Baltimore City. We don't have to take taxis constantly, but it can be a better choice than the alternatives if you don't have a car:

1. Do I walk the 45 minutes each way (carrying groceries on the way back) through dangerous neighborhoods and probably get mugged or worse? (Baltimore is among the 10 most dangerous cities in America)

2. If I have a bike with a basket, do I bike and take the same risk? (People get mugged off their bike frequently here)

3. Do I wait the 80-120 minutes round trip for the bus? (This is often preferable to walking the dangerous neighborhoods, not to mention you can put your bags down)

4. Do I take a taxi, once per week (or less if you buy in bulk) to the store to save time and hassle?

The young women I know in the area who live in a food desert often take the taxi option as it's just less of a risk and they don't want to spend the time and hassle of other options. You spend more money to be safe and get things done after a long day of work.

He's not trying to walk in another person's shoes, simply live by the same constraints.

Constraints? You mean like not owning a car and the increased insurance premiums from living in a high risk area with no credit to speak of?

Which is why it's complete and utter bullshit.

You sleep in horribly shitty conditions, where noise is a constant problem. You do this day in and day out and with poor nutrition, lack of heating/cooling, and a shitty mattress. All in a attempt to save up for a car, insurance, maintenance costs and gas?

Yet it's just about budgetary constraints. Right you are sir. Right you are.

Did you read the article? Quoting from it:

> My goal is merely to help bring awareness to the issue

He's not trying to do some kind of "poor simulation," and to accomplish his goal, he doesn't have to. Even by just doing a simple exercise like strictly limiting his food budget for a week, he has brought some light upon the difficulty that many people face.

Yes and clearly they are not the same constraints.

It's ridiculous to think this raises any sort of awareness to the real issues that poverty presents. It's trite and ignorant to think anything otherwise.

I had never heard of 'food deserts' for example. This stunt raised my awareness.

You're wrong.

Charities seem to think that small, one-line ads with a tidbit of information can raise awareness and spur some people into action; I don't see why this couldn't.

Raising awareness is not the same as getting people to even begin to understand the issue, it's just making people realize there is an issue.

Not everyone is aware as you are of the limitations of poverty. I imagine in particular, this CEO's social circle isn't very aware, and if someone of their own social standing says "hey, I actually tried to eat properly on food stamps, and it can't be done", those people will give it more credence.

(A) We're talking about it. Raise awareness? Done. (B) No they are not the same constraints as a whole, but he is choosing to live by a specific set of constraints. That is the entire premise of what he is doing.

Not living by some extreme set of constraints omg I have to give up everything does not diminish what he is trying to accomplish. You're just adding your own parameters to his experiment.

Heating is not a major problem for the poor. Only 12% of the poor were uncomfortably cold for at least 24 hours last winter. (For comparison, 8% of the nation as a whole suffered this problem.)

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf see table 2.1

Similarly, 73% of the poor own a car.

I guess the budgetary constraints the poor face are not as severe as you seem to believe.

He's not living by the same constraints. For a short period of time, he's limiting ONE constraint out of dozens that a poor person faces.

Reeks of "Hey, look at me (and my company)!!!"

I don't know about people on food stamps specifically (the data doesn't slice by it), but most (70%) poor people have at least one car. 25% have two or more cars.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

Also, most poor people (78%) don't have even one job, let alone two (nor are they even looking for one).

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2011.pdf

>>Also, most poor people (78%) don't have even one job, let alone two (nor are they even looking for one).

First of all, that isn't right from the data you linked to. 59% of people below the poverty line don't have a job or aren't in the labor force(Table 6). Secondly, it turns out that not everyone in a family is a wage earner so there is no way to extrapolate from that data point to how many are just living off welfare.

If you look at table 1 in the bls report you can see that those in poverty & and in the labor force without a job were 17%.

10.4 million working poor / 46.2 million poor == 22% in the labor force. You get up to 37% if you count people who looked for a job at least once a year, but less than half the year.

In the past I've corrected for the fraction of children. It makes no real difference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130441

The fact of the matter is that peterwillis's description of the poor is simply inaccurate for most poor people, most of the time.

There are many US military families who receive SNAP benefits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/food-stamps-militar...

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