Barb Warwick
(click pic for candidate’s website)
Lita Brillman
(click pic for candidate’s website)
There is a contested primary election race for Pittsburgh City Council District 5: between incumbent Barbara Warwick and her Democratic challenger, University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs student Laura (“Lita”) Brillman.
There are no Republican candidates for this seat.
Pittsburgh District 5 comprises the neighborhoods of Glen Hazel, Greenfield, Hays, Hazelwood, Lincoln Place, New Homestead, Regent Square, Squirrel Hill South, and Regent Square.
The candidates’ answers to our voter guide questions for the Primary Election on May 16 are below. You can also learn more about these candidates in the WESA 2023 Primary Election Voter Guide.
2023 Voter Guide Questions:
Roughly 1 in 5 Pittsburgh residents are food insecure, and large sections of the city, especially many predominantly Black neighborhoods, do not have access to healthy affordable food.
1) What would your priorities be as City Councilmember for the deployment of the Pittsburgh Food Justice Fund that the council passed in December?
Brillman:
It is essential that this $3 million is deployed with an equity and racial justice first approach. I am interested in following the lead of the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative (PFJI), which delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars through grants to people of color, immigrants, and women to promote their community-oriented food justice projects. Prioritizing particularly Black people and their projects in Pittsburgh with this funding is essential, since Black people occupy the most food insecure places in Pittsburgh generally and in my district of District 5 specifically. The capacity for this funding to focus on community markets and streamlining food systems is especially relevant in District 5’s Hazelwood neighborhood, which does not have a grocery store. The current plan in development is to open a co-op in Hazelwood, but it is crucial to prioritize using funding to make sure that this grocery store is affordable, accessible both physically via transit and it provides the foods that the community needs at a price they can afford, and that there is community input in its development. The Food Justice Fund can help in places like this to build infrastructure that incorporates local food and labor in delivering it to Black communities like Hazelwood, and establish relationships with grocery stores to participate in their ability to serve their specific communities.
Another priority is to address the most immediate needs first. While this funding can certainly help us invest in food infrastructure for the future, I am most interested in feeding people healthy, affordable food in the here and now. In addition to identifying appropriate partners and locations for grocery stores in underserved or food deserted communities, there are many ways to deploy this funding to meet the immediate needs of people of color here in Pittsburgh, including providing transportation to grocery stores, creating communal eating spaces, and providing resources to support urban farming, incorporating community and after school programs, and distributing fresh local food to non-traditional grocery stores like corner stores and bodegas since they are more likely to serve communities of color. I am interested in investing in creative more long-term sustainable solutions, but at this time we have enough resources for no one to go hungry, it’s just a matter of setting up the systems to deliver it to underserved communities, and I therefore believe prioritizing the funding to immediate solutions to address hunger is the first step.
Warwick:
As an active participant in the City planning process around the Food Justice Fund, my top priority is to ensure that a significant portion of that funding goes toward projects intended to build food infrastructure in predominantly Black and brown and low-income communities like Greater Hazelwood. In particular, I would like to see the City supporting the ongoing project to establish a co-op grocery store in the historic Second Ave business district. Also, I think it is important that we provide funding to smaller organizations, so they can grow their food infrastructure operations and expand the number of jobs those operations provide. To do this, we need to ensure that members of these organizations have a seat at the table as the City determines how much funding goes to each community.
2) What other legislation or policy measures would you support to address hunger and food apartheid in the city?
Brillman:
First and foremost, we need free meals in schools, K-12, full-stop, period. There is no reason a child should be put in debt or stigmatized because their family cannot afford enough food. Kids who are hungry are more likely to run into disciplinary issues, only compounded by racial bias in schools, and are less equipped to learn. Free meals in schools is a racial justice issue, and it must be addressed immediately here in Pittsburgh. I will propose more individualized solutions below, but this systemic step in our education system is one of the most effective things we can do.
On a more individual scale, I would like to replicate programs that have been done in New York City, Detroit, and elsewhere, where low-income people get discounts via vouchers for the purchase of healthy food. This means that if you are on government food assistance, fruits, vegetables, and other local products or anything at a farmer’s market is discounted. I would also prioritize incentivizing grocery stores via subsidies or tax breaks to establish themselves in food deserts, and work to bring smaller local grocery stores and farmers markets (at an affordable price point) to these underserved communities. I would also love to replicate a version of one of the grant recipients of the Chicago Regional Food System Fund, called the Chinese American Service League, which hires culinary graduates to prepare culturally appropriate foods to deliver directly to local seniors.
Finally, I would like to expand SNAP benefits both in the amount allotted to low income families and in the products they cover. While it’s essential to incentivize the purchase of healthy, and if possible, local produce, we must also acknowledge that health is more than just what goes into your body. Being unable to purchase a birthday cake for your child can be detrimental to mental health and those outcomes, and it is dehumanizing for the government to dictate what foods or products families are and aren’t allowed to purchase based on incredibly restrictive and not culturally responsive definitions of “health.”
Warwick:
I would like to explore changes to the Pittsburgh Zoning Code to include requirements around affordable housing, transit, and food access. For example, in addition to inclusionary zoning to provide housing for low- and moderate-income residents, new housing projects should be built along major transit corridors, so that we are ensuring that residents have access to regular bus service that can get them to places like work, health care, and the grocery store. In addition to that, anyone with an EBT/Access card should be able to ride the bus for free. I would also like to see the city incorporate more digital learning services at our libraries and senior centers, to help residents living in food apartheid zones take advantage of grocery delivery directly to their homes. Finally, I would like to see our fire stations used as food bank access points, so that those in need of food can stop by and get what they need close to home.
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