Boston City Council Hears Testimony on Publicly Owned Grocery Stores for Food Deserts

BOSTON — November 20, 2025 — Boston City Council opens hearing on publicly owned grocery stores as food insecurity deepens. The Committee on City Services and Innovation Technology, chaired by Councillor Enrique J. Pepén, convened a November 20 hearing on docket number 1791, examining municipally owned, cooperative, and nonprofit grocery models as a response to widening food access gaps. Aliza Wasserman, director of the Office of Food Justice, reported that 47 percent of Boston residents reported difficulty accessing nutritious food at some point in 2024, that grocery prices are more than 35 percent higher than in 2019, and that a city-state-Boston Foundation partnership has raised more than $3 million to address the November SNAP payment crisis. The city's Double Up Food Bucks program has delivered nearly $1 million in produce subsidies to SNAP recipients at six locally owned stores, with federal funding running through June 2026. Jack Kensla of UFCW Local 1445 pressed the council to consider a "municipally owned, privately operated" model and cited New Jersey's Food Desert Relief Act — which covers up to 40 percent of a new grocery store's startup costs in food deserts — as a template worth studying. Darren Lita, board co-president of the Dorchester Food Co-op, Boston's only community-owned grocery store, warned that the co-op, which opened in October 2023 and has more than 2,300 members, has been forced to cut staff and remains dependent on donations after struggling to attract consistent foot traffic.