A network of urban farms and neighborhood hubs is planned for Cincinnati neighborhoods with high rates of gun violence. It’s the result of a city grant for $850,000 to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and more than a dozen other community partners.
The program has three aims:
- "Establish a vibrant network of neighborhood-designed and led food resource hubs, connected with community-operated urban farm sites, embedded in high-risk neighborhoods.
- "Focus on three special populations: firearm injury survivors, system-involved youth, and public school students.
- "Leverage this highly collaborative effort for city-wide system and narrative change."
Shannon Carr is founder of Isaiah 55, Inc., one of the recipients of the grant. She says the project will serve disadvantaged neighborhoods with urban farms and neighborhood hubs with commercial kitchens.
"Over two years, we aim to serve eight neighborhoods through the hubs that are easily reached on foot; grow 20,000 to 100,000 pounds of fresh produce per year using intensive market gardening techniques; prepare 50,000 to 75,000 meals in 2026, and 100,000 to 150,000 meals in 2027, through hub kitchens; create 15 to 63 new jobs with an emphasis on training neighborhood residents in gardening, cooking, and entrepreneurship."
The first three neighborhood hubs are expected to open within the first year, and are planned for Avondale, East Price Hill, and the West End. Neighborhoods with urban farms and potential future neighborhood hubs include Over-the-Rhine, Villages at Roll Hill, Walnut Hills, West Price Hill, and Winton Hills.
Carley Riley of Cincinnati Children's says a hub will be similar to a neighborhood-led grocery store, but also much more.
"A neighborhood hub can certainly connect food to people, but it can also connect people to people, and also connect people to other opportunity," Riley told WVXU. "This will be a place where youth can be poured into, where they can be connected to mentorship as well as employment and workforce development opportunities."
Riley says research shows a correlation between violent crime and food insecurity, but each problem is complex and solutions are not simple.
"Food represents so much more than a solution to hunger; It also represents community, it represents hopefulness," she said. "And engaging in the production and the distribution of food — it can be so powerful, well beyond addressing anything that folks might name 'hangry-ness.' This is really a deeper, more human solution that can be really transformative, and it's one piece of a very complex problem."
The city grant covers two years of work, but Riley says the hubs will be designed to last far longer. The group has already secured outside funding to support the work and is seeking more.
The city funding comes from the biennial budget process in which about 1.5% of the city general fund is allocated for human services spending. This is the second "Impact Award," which City Council established in an effort to enact system-level change. The first Impact Award is focused on preventing homelessness.
Officials say this work has become more important amid federal changes to reduce food benefits. The USDA just recently announced it will end a longstanding food insecurity survey, as NPR reports.
Riley says those changes could change the way local programs like this one measure success: "It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be all success. I think there's going to be a period of time in which not getting worse is going to be a success."
That said, the project has a long list of outcome metrics that will be tracked monthly or quarterly. That includes number of meals provided, number of people served, food security rates (citywide and by neighborhood), and number of gun violence incidents. They will also collect qualitative survey data such as the percentage of people who feel hopeful, who feel safe in their neighborhood, etc.
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