“Food deserts” are closely correlated with “hardware store deserts” and “liquor store floods.” Demand drives the market. People want merchants who sell $500 tennis shoes or open nail salons. If the demand was not there the businesses would go belly up. If the people in the “deserts” wanted healthy food and were willing to pay for it some enterprising Asian would be there to provide it.
Well, I’ve often heard that you can tell a lot about a neighborhood by the types of businesses there.
Yes there are people in the ghetto, and of course they need to eat. But chain supermarkets avoid the ghetto areas for reasons we can’t mention, due to political correctness. But, these retailers have their business reasons to avoid certain areas, even though there is population to support their business.
So the ghetto ends up with far too many liquor stores per capita, and too few supermarkets.
Some of those ghetto liquor stores are nasty. Was in one once on the South Side of Chicago. The dude sits behind bullet proof glass, and slides your booze to you through a trap door.