The first thing most people want to do when they find themselves in a desert is LEAVE. It’s a desert - it can’t sustain life which isn’t willing to resort to violence to survive (even the _grass_ is out to kill you). There’s a reason life is hard there, and whatever that reason is, you’re not going to change it without expending enormous resources.
A “food desert” is, as named, a desert. OK so it rains - there’s nothing to grow, nothing producing sustenance. What little food does appear is fought over by pretty much everything capable of moving. Unless you’re willing to buy up large swaths of the area and expend enormous resources making it productive and beating off those resorting to violence to acquire it, you have but one choice: MOVE.
/Sarcasm/ It’s clear you don’t understand the romantic,tragic drama of ‘deserts’ in cities. Common sense says-move, leave, go where you can thrive-BUT PC and politics and the media says ‘SAVE IT!’ revitalize it, honor the hardship and suffering it takes to slog away with the criminals and drug addicts, outlast the thieves and arsonists. Suffer nobly and show them a better way and they will suddenly ‘get it’. We are LOVED, people care, they are here to feel our pain. Brad Pitt did it in the Lower Ninth ward, media gushed and you know what? The Lower Ninth is still a blighted ghetto. The ‘green’ houses he built are falling apart. It was a ghetto before, its a destroyed one now. And the people who returned to ‘their’ neighborhood are moaning that its not the same, everyone didn’t come back, its a plot to drive them from their generational neighborhood. They want investments, stores, malls, etc...but they DON’T want to lose the ‘character’ and funkiness. Translation- we want white money, not white people. New stores, luxury items, cheap prices-because they’re victims! Forever./sarc
As I said before, it’s amazing that the mentality of the subculture is the same whatever the city. Now poverty and decay isn’t something to escape, its something to honor and celebrate and romanticize. We’re supposed to subsidize it, not change it.