Navigating food affordability in the Two Bridges neighborhood

Introduction

Louisa Davila had moved into the Two Bridges neighborhood from Morris Heights, the Bronx for two reasons. One, because Yankee Stadium’s expansion in the Bronx forced her to relocate. Two, because she knew there was a Pathmark in the neighborhood that would be convenient for her to get groceries. Well, she was able to enjoy the perk of living three blocks away from a big and affordable supermarket for two years, but that all changed after it closed down in 2012, and was later replaced with a luxurious skyscraper known today as One Manhattan Square.

New York City is getting gentrified in neighborhoods across every borough, one way or another. But Two Bridges, a neighborhood sandwiched between the Lower East Side and Chinatown, has been facing signs of rapid gentrification in recent years. Home to many working-class immigrant families who have lived in this neighborhood for decades, residents have noticed that their neighborhood is changing — a skyscraper was built in 2019 where the beloved Pathmark used to be. Years after Pathmark was replaced, residents faced new complications and in 2021, many developers were planning to go all out and build four more megatowers around the Two Bridges waterfront, which worries many about the kind of consequences that could come after.

I chose this community because I believe they are being ignored by politicians and taken advantage of by real estate developers facing indirect displacement. From developers building expensive luxury buildings to the lack of affordable groceries, I felt that it was important to expose these issues from the community’s view of the gentrification they’re facing, especially as a neighborhood full of working-class communities of color. The only reporting that exists regarding this neighborhood is mostly about what the developers plan on doing with the area, not what the community thinks about these developments that would affect them.

It felt odd that there isn’t enough reporting on a resident’s point of view on the changes within the neighborhood. I remember even the simple google searches I’ve done on this community within the past year weren’t very helpful to inform me about what the residents have been reacting or feeling about the changes within their area. That gave me more of a motivation to do something about it and hopefully inform a person or two of the existing issues that persist within such a small neighborhood.

Background and context

The name of the neighborhood was coined back in 1954 by the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, led by Victor Papa, the current president of the council. The name also came from the fact that the neighborhood is in between both the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Immigrants have moved into the area from various parts of the world over the years including the Irish, Chinese, and Italians. According to the NYU Furman Center, as of 2019, 33% of the Lower East Side and Chinatown where Two Bridges reside identifies as Asian, 8% identify as Black and 25% identify as Hispanic. Racial diversity has remained mostly the same, but the age of the average resident has not. About 22% of Two Bridges neighbors are now over 65 years old, an increase of nearly 8% more in almost 10 years. Based on the 2020 Census, the population of the neighborhood is 29,129 people with an average income of $40,590. 45% of households make less than $35,000/year.

After talking to many of the residents in interviews and attending community meetings, I learned that awareness is their priority currently. They want people in New York and beyond to understand their struggles and just be aware of the ongoing gentrification that is very much present in New York City, and that those who are suffering are the low and working class. Almost every person I spoke with within the community brings up Pathmark; that beloved supermarket left a mark on everyone in the neighborhood. People still speak about it to this day, even in the Facebook group called “THE LOWER EAST SIDE,” members start conversations about what they miss about the area, sometimes even bringing out old pictures and other treasures.

I previously did reporting for my engagement reporting classes, one for the protest they had in 2021 against developers who were trying to submit permits to build four megatowers at Two Bridges’ waterfront, and at the same time, I was able to produce a news package on permits with the help of Trever Holland, president of Tenants Union Fighting For Lower East Side (TUFF-LES) who was able to give a lot of context on what’s at stake for the neighborhood. I also produced an explainer on the beloved grocery store Pathmark and how its closure was a sign of the neighborhood changing. To further understand the resident’s worries and needs for pre-reporting efforts, I made a callout.

After being around the neighborhood for the first few months in 2022, it made sense to focus on some offline outreach. I put up flyers with my callout attached to them that lead people to the callout around communal areas in the neighborhood, and I attempted to do online outreach as well with the online flyer.

I’ve had help to get my callout posted in THE LOWER EAST SIDE Facebook group, which has about 20k group members. Chinatown YMCA is another group that helped circulate my callout by putting it in their newsletter which reaches about 300 subscribers. Even one of the residents I’ve been in contact with shared my callout through word of mouth and putting flyers at other communal areas she has access to. I was also invited to table at a community event by the Chinatown YMCA on April 16 2022 which led me to speak to some folks about their opinions of the neighborhood.

I called CAAAV, an organization that serves the community for help but they declined because they aren’t allowed to assist student journalists. I also tweeted out my callout with related hashtags to the community hoping someone stumbled upon it.

After all those efforts, I was able to get 8 responses for my callout and 23 bit.ly link clicks. I’ve gotten feedback from word of mouth that people are afraid that the information from the callout will be used for something unethical. One of the responses I got after explaining what I was doing when I tabled at Chinatown YMCA’s event was that they were afraid to have their name mentioned anywhere even when I said that they can be anonymous if needed. It seems like some people aren’t very eager to have their opinions out there if their name is attached because the same person still shared what they feel, but was not open to answering a Google form or a printout of the same callout. I also learned through this event that some are more eager to answer a printout of the callout rather than the online callout. One of the ladies I spoke with there said that even though she has a smartphone, she would rather fill out a form with physical paper and pen over anything.

Despite having a small pool of responses from this callout, I was still able to get a good amount of information from them that informed me of what matters to them most lately. From the results of my callout, 62.5% out of the 8 responses on my callout had no idea that developers are planning to build megatowers at the waterfront. Another eye-opening finding from my callout is that 75% had their expenses increased over the years whether it is from groceries, rent, or bills just to name a few.

I also learned through this process that many people aren’t likely to fill out an online survey or form if there wasn’t a physical version of it, especially older residents. I’ve had to give out 3 physical versions of the callout so that the 3 elder residents could answer them whereas I also sometimes had to assist them in answering and help write out their answers for them. All the physical copies will then be manually added into the online form myself so I can have everyone’s data together in one place. I feel that people are more likely to answer any survey when I talk to them a bit more about the work I do, which entices them to become interested and less guarded.

I also created an Instagram page called “Two Bridges Voices” where I interviewed three ladies with a common problem. They all had to get groceries further away from the neighborhood because Pathmark, their beloved local and affordable grocery store, closed down 10 years ago. As they don’t use Instagram, I shared the link and pictures I took of them.

After all the initial research and conversations, I chose to focus the work I’m doing more on food affordability in the neighborhood since I caught the common theme of Pathmark’s closure forcing residents to buy their groceries further away from the neighborhood, and just the frequent mentioning of missing Pathmark. I also think that pointing out the fact that groceries are getting expensive within the neighborhood is an important indicator of gentrification and a clear example to help more people understand what the effects look like within a diverse neighborhood in New York City.

Practicum

My first project is to produce a service journalism story about the 3 ladies I interviewed for the Instagram page back in early 2022, mapping out their long commutes to their current affordable grocery spots. This will take a few months starting from October 2022 to get done.

I contacted the ladies in September if they were interested in making a service journalism piece on their experiences and they accepted. We started going out for shopping adventures with each lady starting in October and ending in November. I was documenting each lady’s commute to and from their home to their grocery stores whether by train, bus, or by walking. Each of them has very different routes, methods of travel, and grocery spots so it was refreshing to see how each of them goes about their day doing errands.

Louisa Davila, 59 and resident of 12 years in Two Bridges has let me follow her to shop two times, at two different locations. The first time, which was on October 10, 2022, was when we took the F train together from East Broadway in the Lower East Side to Avenue I at Borough Park where ShopRite is at. “I go here only when I have the time with no work, like at least once every 2 weeks,” she said. A month later, she also invited me to shop with her somewhere a little closer to Two Bridges, where she shopped at multiple grocery spots in Alphabet City because each of the stores had its special deals she wanted to benefit from. She even collects flyers from each store to know the latest deals for her next trip back. “I do not shop without flyers,” she said.

Elaine Hoffman, 70 and resident of 25 years in Two Bridges used to go Western Beef Supermarket in Chelsea before the pandemic hit. Ever since she was forced to get her groceries nearby but “nothing can beat the prices here” she once said. After talking for a while, she was determined to take the trip back to Chelsea in October just for the story and just be able to recount her steps from which bus stop she took the bus transfers and even the walk up to the store just for the story. We had to take two different buses and a 10-minute walk to get to the store. Despite how amazing the prices were, which to Elaine, beats the prices in Two Bridges, she was really tired after the whole 4-hour trip in Chelsea and said that she may not be able to go back there again because of how tiring the trip was. A month later, she took me around the spots she goes to for groceries now. One, in particular, she always gets her meat is called Papito’s, where she knew the man behind the store for years now and has never stopped going there since she moved to the area.

Rosa Colòn, 80, and resident of 49 years in Two Bridges is one of the only ladies that stayed to shop around the neighborhood for whatever it offers. We only took one trip together as she was able to take me around the stores she usually hit up nearby in a day. She brought me to Fine Fare and Key Foods Supermarket which was about 11 minutes away from her home — but due to her broken leg, it took her about half an hour to reach Fine Fare. She said that during her young adult days, she had once fallen which resulted in her getting arthritis in her right leg. I asked if she has considered getting surgery or anything to help her leg but she says that she refused it when the doctor recommended it. She has heard of different ways to remedy her pain but also heard that they may not work for everyone, so she chose to get used to it. “Of course, I feel the pain when I walk and do my errands, but I’m used to it now,” she said.

I think this project is important because it will address the gentrification in low to working-class neighborhoods in New York City, and also since it’s been 10 years since Pathmark closed down, I would like to see how much has changed in terms of grocery affordability. I checked out the grocery stores that are available in the neighborhood today and saw how prices are different from Pathmark before. The ladies have given great breakdowns of what their groceries used to cost then and now. This story should be published both online and offline because I want the people not on the Internet or social media to see the story too. While I may be able to pitch it to any New York-based publication for the online store, I think the offline story should be pitched to a local newspaper from the Lower East Side/Chinatown so that it’ll reach the community.

Since there is a lack of stories from a resident’s point of view of gentrification, especially from the neighborhood, I thought it would make sense to produce a story focusing on each lady’s experiences, which may be familiar to many other New Yorkers.

My second project is to share resources on affordable grocery stores within or near the neighborhood with a postcard guide, which I’m calling The Postcard Project. The goal is to have it mailed to all residential addresses in the Lower East Side and possibly have it included with the grocery store’s flyers to share around the resource. I plan to incorporate multiple languages that are commonly spoken in the neighborhood (Spanish, Chinese, and more), a phone number to act as a hotline or call-back service with a messaging service, and also a QR code that could lead people to a link full of informationals. I plan to do this as a collaborative with the non-profit organizations that have been doing the work with the community, which are CAAAV, GOLES (Good Ole Lower East Side), TUFF-LES (Tenants Union Fighting For the Lower East Side), and hopefully many more as many have been trying to bring more awareness about the work they’re doing to save the neighborhood from gentrification.

I’ve received interest from some of the non-profit organizations and have already made mock designs as of December 2022. The non-profit organizations are integral in this work because they already established a relationship with the community and it would make sense to collaborate with them especially when we both have very similar goals. Additionally, many of these non-profit organizations have mailers sent out, especially during the first year of the pandemic, so utilizing that would be great to test out the postcard guide with its potential.

Currently, there is no set time when it could get released due to the non-profit organizations not having the capacity to do the work. When it does get released, we plan to try to have it mailed out once a month for the first three months as a test to see if it truly does work.

I wanted to make a guide in the first place because I have the understanding that with Pathmark gone and many other affordable grocery spots getting expensive, many residents find better alternatives — but they end up finding those alternatives all over New York City where commutes could take up so much time, money, and energy. The guide’s purpose is to ease residents find alternatives for more affordable groceries within and nearby the neighborhood.

The reason why I went with a more physical guide instead of doing an online guide was mostly that it will be accessible to everyone. A lot of the people I spoke with belong to the older generation and don’t necessarily use social media or the internet to get their news — many still rely on good old-fashioned television news or word of mouth from the community.

Louisa once said that adding a contact number somewhere in the postcard guide would be super helpful for her. “I tend to look for a phone number somewhere whenever I see a flyer — and if I’m interested I’m likely to call or text the number,” she said. She even mentioned a call-back service could work as well as long as there’s a number for people like her to use.

So I thought that going for the more traditional methods of communication would work like postcards. It’s a great addition to having a contact number if they are not able to use the QR code.

There are chances of doing more work in online spaces but for now, I’m sticking with more offline approaches just so everyone will be included in the projects I’m doing. I’m just making sure that people of all ages and abilities can access useful information.

Metrics, outcomes and impact

For metrics for both projects, there are a few ways to determine that the story and postcards have reached the community and are deemed successful. We would focus on both online and offline feedback.

For online feedback, this would mostly pertain to the service journalism story. After it gets published it will be shared on the publication’s social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. With each post or tweet, I would measure impressions and engagement rates. The goal would depend on which outlet it will be published at. The goal is for the story to get published in a local news publication, especially one with a high readership and circulation like The Village Sun, AmNY, or Bowery Boogie.

Also for the story where it will be live at a news publication once it is done for publication, I’m hoping to look into page views and bounce rates as a great indicator of interest from the public, and hopefully readers from the community, too. The story will be featured on the Instagram page as well, as another way to see the impact. There will also be a post-story survey, available online. By the end of the story, there will be a short google form with questions on how I could improve my work. It will be a short survey that shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes — just to get the reader’s comments on the story. If there are available funds, there will be a raffle for a gift card for groceries for those who contribute.

For the postcards, we would look closely at the number of scans the QR code gets and how many visitors have visited the link attached to the QR code.

Offline feedback is a priority for both projects as it is considered the best way to detect impact, especially for this specific neighborhood. Getting direct feedback from the residents at events or community meetings is the best way to get that feedback — casually interacting and having conversations with the people within the neighborhood makes them more likely to give their insights. I would also pay close attention to the number of phone calls and text messages we get from the community, especially from the older community, to be sure it is working for them.

A big indicator that both projects are working is when people share offline or online that it has helped them in any way, either by helping them to get affordable groceries nearby or to feel that the story has touched them in some way.

Rosa felt that the work I’m doing is super important after I interviewed her regarding the fact that 10 years have passed since Pathmark closed, and she felt heard.

“You’re here, you’re listening. And trying to do something about it,” Rosa said.

I can tell that somehow that me being around, listening to residents’ stories, and hearing them out has touched their hearts. It feels like I’m included in a big family.

Louisa and Rosa live in the same building, and in early December I came to visit both of them to have sit-down interviews for the service journalism piece. Turns out that almost the whole time I was there they did nothing but take care of me and feed me as if I were their own, just typical mom things. Even Louisa cried when she found out that I was gonna graduate soon with a master’s degree. I did not expect them to trust me, or be vulnerable with me in a matter of months after meeting up, calling, and texting maybe once or twice a month. If that isn’t an impact, I don’t know what is.

Reflect on the bigger picture

In the next few months, I will be applying for grants to support the Postcard Project to be able to finance the project. One of the grants I’m looking at is the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s fellowship which finances community-centered journalism projects. However, the non-profit organizations that are interested in the project also have their grants that may be able to support the project. There is a possibility that the focus of the project could change depending on what the non-profit feels would be best — like sharing the benefits of food stamps within the neighborhood. I trust that these non-profit organizations know what’s best for the community to be able to use the postcard guide to share any guidance on other pertaining issues that matter to them.

As for the story, I’m hoping to get the story published in the first few months of 2023. The story should be completed and the pitch will be sent out hopefully by January 2023. Post-publication, I’ll be looking into feedback from both online and offline and assessing it — especially from the online feedback form that will be attached to the end of the story.

Another idea I wish I had time to do is to make more social videos with the community. I have taken some b-roll of the people I interviewed for the service journalism story but that may only happen after the story gets published. However, there are possibilities to do more in online spaces that I may have not discovered just yet. The idea of a chatbot is a possibility as well that could work for text messages instead of having another person on the other side.

This neighborhood is very inspirational for many, especially for other gentrified neighborhoods in New York City. They’ve done a lot from mobilizing residents, politicians, and many more to fight against gentrification and they’ve come as far as to make a rezoning plan that was made by the community — which is almost unheard of anywhere in New York. I hope that this community gets the limelight but in the best way possible, to recognize their efforts and the problems they have to face in an ever-changing New York.

I’ve learned so much from my time serving this neighborhood but I’ve learned two big lessons from my year and a half serving this community.

• Listening is power

I am so inspired by the community and how listening is such a powerful tool for marginalized communities to stand up for themselves and fight back, especially against developers. Listening is an important part of the engagement program but I only knew how to listen better and actively because of the residents.

• Showing up equals trust

I feel that if I wasn’t showing up for community meetings, protests, or even just hanging around the neighborhood — I wouldn’t have gained this much trust that I have today. Even the ladies I interviewed for the service journalism piece have taken care of me as if I’m their own. I believe that because of the work I do and how I’m doing it has led people to trust me. Once they hear me out, they put their guard down almost immediately. Whether online or in person, showing up is important so they know these people aren’t alone in their fight.