It's a sunny spring Friday afternoon and the parking lot behind the dollar store in Walnut Hills is busy. People are streaming through to pick up produce and other fresh food distributed by the Freestore Foodbank and food rescue nonprofit LaSoupe.
The weekly food distribution event started after the neighborhood's Kroger closed in 2017. Longtime Walnut Hills resident Shaun Miller says the closure made it a lot harder for people in Walnut Hills to find food.
鈥淲hen they took it and banged it down, that was it for us,鈥� she says. "I could walk and get my groceries, get my veggies, get my cardio."
Kroger leaving was especially hard for seniors like Miller鈥檚 grandmother.
shows 1 in 6 people in Walnut Hills are over 65, and more than 1 in 5 of the neighborhood's residents live with a disability 鈥� among the highest proportion in the city.
Miller started volunteering at the food distribution site five years ago after seeing the difficulties older people were having accessing food.
鈥淚t started with my grandmother,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e heard about the program, but she wasn鈥檛 able to get up here, so I鈥檇 come for her.鈥�
Community-led solutions
Miller says a lot of things have come to the neighborhood to fill the vacuum left by the closure of the grocery store. LaSoupe moved to the community from Newtown in 2020. The organization rescues produce that would otherwise be thrown away and redistributes it. They give away roughly 3,000 pounds of food at the weekly food distribution in Walnut Hills.
They're not the first or only ones working on the problem. In the years since the Kroger closed, the community has become a kind of laboratory for ways to address food insecurity, especially for people with mobility and transportation issues.
Mona Jenkins is the president of the Walnut Hills Area Council. She also helps run Queen Mother's Market, which helps connect people to food. The initiative hopes to eventually establish a full-scale, community-owned grocery store in the neighborhood.
The organization won a $500,000 federal grant last year toward that end. It's currently tied up in the congressional budget process, however, and its future is murky under the Trump administration.
But Jenkins says the organization isn't waiting. They鈥檙e working with other co-op efforts like Detroit People's Food Co-op and Dayton's Gem City Market to try and expand their wholesale buying power. And she says they're taking the food to people directly in the meantime 鈥� with a focus on seniors.
鈥淧eople still need food,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e have been purchasing items in bulk, getting items from our farmers, going into our senior buildings and setting up markets and distributing that way.鈥�
Jenkins says that outreach has added benefits beyond just nutrition.
鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 just about the produce,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was about, 鈥楲et鈥檚 do some wellness checks.鈥� When you get to know people, you can start looking at, 鈥楬ey, Miss Mary, you鈥檙e not looking so well today 鈥� what鈥檚 going on?鈥� Then you can start looking at connecting them to other resources.鈥�
Adressing health concerns
Simone Bess has lived in Walnut Hills for more than three decades. She's raised two now-grown children there and loves the community. But she "can't imagine" being a young mother in the neighborhood today without the grocery store there. And she echoes others' concerns about the struggles for older people.
"A lot of people are on the bus or walking," she says. "That's why the food distributions that Queen Mother's Market and other entities come together to support are so important. There are a lot of older or disabled residents who are challenged with transportation. Being able to walk a half a block or a block away to get food is really important."
Bess lives near the dollar store in Walnut Hills, which puts customers' purchases in bright yellow bags. It might be a good place to get some things, she says, but it's not a place to rely on for nutrition, with most of its food offerings being highly processed and full of sugar and fat.
She ties the neighborhood's health to the fact that some residents feel like there aren't other options. Walnut Hills ranks 44th in the city when it comes to diabetes and 47th out of 52 neighborhoods when it comes to kidney conditions, according to city data.
"When you don't have access to low-cost, high quality produce, it affects your health," she says. "That's why [seeing] the yellow bags kind of bothers me."
Growing food and connections
Queen Mother's Market, another grassroots group called the Black Power Initiative, and other organizations do some of their work expanding access to produce in the neighborhood's nine community gardens. Those are especially deep-rooted in Walnut Hills and provide a resource for people who otherwise have a hard time getting produce.
Gary Dangel is one of the neighborhood's go-to figures for community gardening. He points out the tradition goes back much further than him 鈥� he mentions the Beecher Garden, which he says is the oldest Black-run community garden in the city dating back to the 1970s.
Dangel has been tending many of the neighborhood's gardens since 2012. He says they're a great way to bring food closer to people. Standing in one at the busy Taft Road and Kemper Lane intersection, he points out high-rise apartment buildings around it.
鈥淎lms, Park Eden, Alexandria, Kemper Lane Apartments 鈥� four big apartment buildings that are affordable and with a lot of elderly and mobility-challenged folks who can get a bed and grow themselves whatever vegetables they want,鈥� he says. 鈥淥r if they don鈥檛 want to or unable, they can just come and pick. Almost all the beds are open harvest.鈥�
Dangel also says there's a big social benefit to the gardens. People from those apartments meet each other gardening, he says, even when they never got to know each other in their buildings.
A solution isn't 'just one thing'
Dangel admits that even nine community gardens aren't enough to feed Walnut Hills' 6,000 residents. But they help 鈥� and he says they could help more if more local vacant land was devoted to growing food.
Dangel says the neighborhood鈥檚 needs also go beyond a new grocery store.
鈥淭here are a lot of issues that lead to people being food insecure,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ot having a grocery store in the neighborhood makes all of that worse, but it can鈥檛 just be one thing that鈥檚 the solution to the problem.鈥�
Walnut Hills recently got a small store, ETC, that does stock fresh produce and other grocery items. And a new startup called the Urban Farming Initiative is picking up Dangel's work in the gardens. They're looking to coordinate gardening efforts for maximum productivity and to connect people and organizations growing and eating produce.
Residents like Miller, the food distribution volunteer, say each initiative in the neighborhood is a small part of the puzzle. They鈥檙e all efforts needed to make healthy food easy to get in Walnut Hills.
"The changes that are being made are good changes," Miller says. "I like that."
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