Seattle Spends $1.7M on Grocery Bailouts as Budget Deficit Looms and Shoplifting Surges

Seattle is trying to keep independent supermarkets afloat with a $1.7 million subsidy package, even as the city stares down a budget deficit that could consume roughly 10 percent of its revenues over the next three years, according to an analysis published by the Daily Wire in collaboration with the Manhattan Institute.

The aid, announced by Mayor Katie Wilson, includes money for store security upgrades and reimbursements for repair costs after break-ins. But the piece, written by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Steven Malanga, argues the sum is both more than a fiscally strained city should be spending and far too little to matter in a metropolis with nearly 400 food stores.

A Shift From Government-Run Grocery Stores

The subsidies represent a retreat from a more ambitious idea floated by Wilson’s predecessor. Former Mayor Bruce Harrell said last year that Seattle would explore opening government-owned supermarkets to address concerns about “food deserts” — neighborhoods without convenient access to grocery stores. Harrell noted that at least 10 Seattle neighborhoods lacked easy access to a supermarket and even raised the possibility of using eminent domain to seize private property for government-run outlets.

Malanga argues that such interventions are unnecessary in a city with a median household income of about $120,000 and a single-digit poverty rate, well below most large American cities. He points out that Seattle is one of the nation’s largest retail markets and one of its wealthiest big cities.

During her campaign, Wilson blamed store closings on corporate greed rather than crime or regulation. At a rally against the closure of a Kroger supermarket, she said, “They want us to think it’s about crime and poverty and what they like to call regulatory burdens, which means high wages and strong labor standards. But don’t fall for it. It’s about corporate greed.”

That framing echoes a narrative that took hold in academic circles roughly 30 years ago, when urbanists began using the term “food deserts” to suggest that profit-driven corporations were abandoning lower-income neighborhoods.

Retail Flight Follows Disorder, Not Greed

Malanga contends the historical record tells a different story. Food stores disappeared from swaths of urban America during the crime waves of the 1970s and 1980s, he writes. Newark went decades without a single supermarket inside its city limits. Large sections of New York City lacked big grocery stores in the 1980s.

When cities reprioritized public safety, retail came back. As crime fell beginning in the 1990s, New York City added roughly 38,000 store jobs between 1993 and 2000, then another 78,000 in the following decade. Food-store employment alone grew by some 27,000 jobs from the early 1990s until just before the pandemic shutdowns.

That trend has since reversed in many places. Starting about a decade ago, states and cities reduced penalties for property crimes like shoplifting, and the aftermath of the 2020 riots over George Floyd’s death prompted many municipalities to pull back on policing. From the start of 2020 through last year, chain stores closed 797 locations in New York City, including dozens of supermarkets and drug stores, as shoplifting complaints climbed.

Seattle, which never experienced the urban decline that hit many Midwest and Northeast cities decades ago, has been hit hard by the recent wave of disorder, Malanga writes. He cites rising homelessness, the 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest that officials allowed to persist for weeks, and escalating taxes and regulations as factors undermining a once-thriving city.

While Seattle had been a leader in attracting residents and businesses for a decade, outmigration surged starting with COVID. Net retail jobs in the metro area have declined since 2019 and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the piece. Kroger and other large chains have attributed closings in part to retail theft. A 2023 National Retail Federation study ranked Seattle as the fifth-worst retail market in America for shoplifting losses.

Business Leaders Press for Action on Safety

The city’s subsidy announcement acknowledged the crime problem indirectly, Malanga notes, by including money for security improvements and break-in repairs. But he argues Seattle is not doing enough to restore order.

Days before Wilson’s office issued its press release on the grocery subsidies, a coalition of business leaders led by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce sent a letter urging the mayor to “act with urgency, fund the actions needed to improve safety, and provide a clear plan for measuring progress.” The letter followed a poll in which only 34 percent of residents said they were confident the Wilson administration had a workable strategy for addressing public safety concerns. The business group called for cutting 911 response times and instituting foot patrols in high-crime areas.

Malanga concludes that voters would likely not have endorsed policies that reduced the number of food stores if asked directly. He argues that political leaders’ convenient excuse — blaming heartless corporations — ignores the fact that retail flight tends to follow rising crime, dirty streets, and soaring homelessness.

The article is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Steven Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior editor of City Journal.

Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-bad-policies-cooked-up-seattles-grocery-crisis