Pittsburgh Council approves ‘food justice fund’

PITTSBURGH — As part of a multimillion-dollar budget approved this week, Pittsburgh City Council gave the green light to launch a “food justice fund” aimed at making healthy foods accessible.

“We have inequitable distribution of healthy food across our city, and we have an opportunity with this fund to improve on that,” said Karlin Lamberto, interim executive director for the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council.

Pittsburgh Food Policy Council was among the advocating agencies who spent more than a year asking city council to develop the fund.

This week, council members approved allocating $3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Lamberto said she plans to be part of the team that will decide where exactly the money will go.

“We imagine a variety of buckets of funding,” she said, noting several possibilities. Some money could go toward urban farms, while other funds could help corner stores and small food businesses provide healthy food to residents.

“We have many communities that don’t have grocery stores,” Lamberto said. “Access to healthy food is a human right, and we want to make that more accessible for all of our residents.”

The $3 million in funding was pulled from $10 million that had been proposed to go toward the city’s Land Bank. Now, $7 million will go toward that organization, a deduction that earned criticism from Councilman Rev. Ricky Burgess.

Burgess said during a meeting last week that the city has an affordable housing crisis and money should not be stripped from the Land Bank. He said he didn’t oppose funding “food justice,” but did note that the fund currently has no clear plan.

“This is one of the first times I’ve seen us fund something that’s theoretical, without real direction,” he said.

Following those remarks, Council President Theresa Kail-Smith introduced a resolution requiring that a plan for the “food justice fund” be approved by council before the money is released.

A supporter who spoke this week before council urged members to approve the fund, stating, “There is a crossover between affordable housing and food insecurity. ... The two are very much intertwined.”

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