The COVID-19 pandemic has created a public health emergency throughout much of the world, including in the United States. During the pandemic, people’s ability to access affordable, healthy food has been impacted in many ways. These obstacles include supply chain and price disruptions; challenges to safely accessing food at stores, food pantries, and other outlets; food becoming less affordable given rising unemployment rates and other circumstances; barriers to food program participation exacerbated by transportation and internet accessibility issues; and closure of schools and other venues where people typically participate in meal services. While some of these food access challenges are best addressed through federal, state, or private sector interventions, local governments—including cities, towns, and counties—are often uniquely positioned to understand food access needs in their communities and can use a variety of policy tools to address them.

Throughout the first several months of the pandemic, the Healthy Food Policy Project (the Project) team gathered numerous examples of formal local government policies that have been passed or ordered during this period to accelerate, prioritize, or facilitate food access through efforts that exceed ordinary, non-emergency policies. We have catalogued many such policies in the Project’s COVID-19 Food Access Municipal Policy Index.¹ In doing so, we have especially focused on elevating examples that prioritize health and equity considerations. This resource is a companion to that index and summarizes some of the types of laws we found through our research through the fall of 2020.

While the Project team has taken extensive measures to search for food access policies enacted and ordered throughout municipalities across the country, given certain search limitations, we cannot be certain to have identified all relevant formal municipal policies.² Therefore, this resource and the index are not necessarily comprehensive in coverage. This resource provides an overview of the types of policies we are seeing but does not call out every policy from every jurisdiction. Furthermore, the index only includes policies that specifically relate to food access, so it does not include policies supporting housing security, minimum wage laws, transportation, or food worker protections. However, policies that relate to those areas are included if food access is explicitly mentioned. Additionally, we have not considered school district policies and other special board policies because they are harder to locate and verify, and have always been excluded from the scope of the Healthy Food Policy Project work.

As we have reviewed and analyzed policies for inclusion in the COVID-19 Policy Index several themes have emerged.³ These themes provide insight into the types of policy levers municipalities are using. These themes generally correspond to the categories used in the index at the time of this writing, but those categories remain somewhat fluid and are subject to future revision as we find additional policies that may not neatly fit the categories we have identified thus far.

Food Assistance Funding, Support, and Directives

Emergencies may impact longstanding meal service programs especially for children, seniors, and people with disabilities.⁴ Changes in meal services, such as Meals on Wheels and school meals have been addressed, to some extent, through stop-gap measures like the Pandemic EBT program and other federal meal program flexibilities.⁵ Municipalities are supplementing these efforts by allocating funding to provide food to individuals or families, or with financial benefits, like gift cards, to support food purchases. To fund these efforts, local governments have leveraged a variety of funding streams.

Many have relied on funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.⁶ Municipalities have allocated CARES Act funding to directly assist local distribution efforts, support existing food banks and delivery programs, and improve food distribution infrastructure. For example, Hennepin County in Minnesota allocated $2 million to food distribution and delivery efforts.⁷ Likewise, the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County has directed $2.5 million of CARES Act funding to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee to distribute food to all persons in need due to COVID-19, including those unable to provide a social security number.⁸

Other municipalities have used CARES funding to create local food distribution infrastructure. For example, Dekalb County, Georgia, has invested $2.8 million to create a mobile farmers’ market van paired with a wellness clinic.⁹ While CARES funding was time limited, this investment in a mobile van will continue to serve the community even as emergency needs wane.

Some municipalities have relied on community grants. For example, Dekalb County, Georgia has accepted and distributed a grant from a regional commission to provide meals for seniors placed on a waitlist for food assistance.¹⁰

Some jurisdictions have created new funding with private donations. In San Francisco, a city controller was authorized to accept private donations to create a fund for food access without interference from local laws.¹¹ In Seattle, a COVID-19 donation fund was created to collect and distribute grants for those in need, including food assistance.¹²

Finally, some jurisdictions have relied on general funds or existing special funds. For example, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, directed $1 million for child food programs and $1 million for senior food programs from previously undirected general funds.¹³ Columbus, Ohio, has directed funds from its general fund to be deployed for food security and other human service emergency needs.¹⁴ The city of Madison, Wisconsin, allocated $50,000 from a Miscellaneous Appropriation fund to partner with designated groups that are funding grocery boxes and home-delivered meals.¹⁵

A unique strategy in Seattle leverages an existing fund to address emergency food access. Specifically, the city has allocated $5 million from its sweetened beverage tax fund to the Office of Sustainability and Environment for the purpose of creating a grocery voucher program to support low-income families facing food insecurity.¹⁶ The program prioritizes populations such as immigrants, refugees, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and workers displaced because of the emergency.¹⁷ In a different grocery card program, Miami has approved distributing $3,554,000 in the form of $250 grocery gift cards, in a disbursement method proportionate to the city’s anti-poverty initiative percentages.¹⁸

In addition to identifying and leveraging funding streams, some municipalities have found other ways to direct or support food assistance measures, including ensuring food program sites can continue to operate amid other closures.¹⁹ Some have even required meal service programs—outside of federal meal programs—to continue service.²⁰ Largely, these policies focus on programs for seniors and people with disabilities, like Meals on Wheels, to ensure these priority populations are able to receive meals.²¹

Laws that Address Language Barriers & Other Food Security and Access Disparities Among Racial and Ethnic Groups

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected Black and indigenous people and other people of color (BIPOC) for a variety of reasons, including discrimination and systemic barriers to equitable healthcare, employment, and housing options.²² These issues have compounded the effects of COVID-19, including food insecurity.²³ Besides hunger, disparities in access to nutritious foods have heightened other health risks for migrant workers, immigrants, refugees, and other BIPOC communities which experience disproportionately high rates of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma.²⁴

Municipalities should consider these and other factors when creating policies for community food access. Some examples of equity considerations in local government food access policy have emerged during the pandemic. For example, some municipalities are addressing communication barriers by ensuring that information about food programs is delivered in a variety of languages. In Fresno, California, an ordinance was amended to require information about emergency food programs to be translated into Spanish, Hmong, and Punjabi.²⁵ Seattle’s grocery voucher program prioritizes food funding support to immigrants and refugees. Additionally, Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee have ensured funds will be used for food disbursement, regardless of whether a beneficiary is able to provide a social security number.²⁶ In Minneapolis, Minnesota, city staff undertook a racial equity impact analysis to inform city council members in deciding whether to accept a grant and appropriate funds to the city health department for food distribution services.²⁷ The staff found that, among other things, the grant would directly support 300–600 majority Latinx and BIPOC community members weekly with emergency food and supplies in an “area over-burdened with poverty, unemployment, food insecurity and environmental justice challenges.”²⁸

Food Pricing, Supply Chain, and Rationing Laws

Emergencies can incite panic-buying of goods, leading to supply shortages, price increases, and even price gouging practices; the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.²⁹ Other disruptions, such as worker illness and food processing plant outbreaks, have wreaked havoc on the supply chain.³⁰ Municipalities are counteracting the consequences of these behaviors and disruptions by addressing food pricing, distribution, and supply controls. These include laws that protect, direct, or control distribution, pricing, supply, allocation, or rationing of food.

In some cases, municipalities have activated pre-existing emergency price gouging ordinances, or created similar ordinances, to prevent food-related businesses from increasing the prices of essential items or food delivery services.³¹ Some localities have also required grocery stores to control the amount of essential supplies purchased by each household to discourage hoarding.³² Municipalities have also granted authority to the mayor or other local government actors to distribute food or funds to impacted individuals and families, while suspending local laws that would impede this purpose.³³

Government Food Purchasing Measures

During emergencies like the pandemic, local governments may wish to directly provide food to community members, and so may need to specifically approve government purchases to buy food for distribution. This may require laws that allow or direct local government actors to either directly procure food or facilitate in the procurement process.

Although the Project team has sought to find policies that utilize this strategy, our search results have yielded limited results to date. However, we have found municipalities enacting emergency orders that suspend compliance with standard contracting requirements in order to facilitate local government food purchases.³⁴ For example, in Columbus, Ohio, an ordinance was passed that waived competitive bidding procedures for contracts that utilize emergency funds for food security infrastructure.³⁵

Laws that Allow Food Service Establishments Focused on Serving Priority Populations to Continue Operating Amid Ordered Business Closures and Stay-at-Home Restrictions

As a multitude of executive orders flooded the municipal landscape at the start of the COVID-19 emergency, many orders required closure of non-essential businesses. However, to ensure food access to the most vulnerable, executive orders have promoted food service establishments that serve priority populations in a variety of ways.³⁶ These include laws that exempt establishments that serve priority populations, such as nursing homes, homeless shelters, food shelves, school meal service operations, etc., from business closures.

Commonly, executive orders that require certain businesses and other entities to close define food banks, charities, and organizations that provide food for economically disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized populations as essential services that may remain open.³⁷ Executive orders have accomplished the same end through different means; by exempting food banks, charities, and nonprofit organizations that serve priority populations from the definition of food service establishments that are required to close.³⁸

Other executive orders have included language specific to priority populations. For example, many municipalities allow exceptions to stay-at-home orders for schools that offer takeaway food services from stay-at-home orders, or define them as an essential activity allowed to continue during stay-at-home orders.³⁹ Other orders have allowed exceptions for food distribution services that are provided to older adults.⁴⁰

Other Allowances and Flexibilities for Food Service Establishments

Emergencies place financial pressure on food service establishments.⁴¹ To help relieve this pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, municipalities are relaxing various restrictions on food service establishments. This includes laws that provide special operating flexibility or other emergency-period allowances for food service establishments. For example, municipalities are relaxing noise and hour-of-delivery ordinances so that food establishments may receive deliveries regardless of the time of day, in recognition that the supply chain is disrupted and deliveries are in high demand.⁴² Another approach to promote food establishments includes relaxing the city code’s signage and zoning ordinances, permit fees, and license requirements.⁴³ In addition to helping promote business takeaway and curbside pickup services, these laws have attempted to ease the financial burden of struggling food establishments.⁴⁴

Laws that Allow Fresh Food Sales, Purchases, Cultivation, Hunting, and Fishing Amid Ordered Business Closures and Stay-at-Home Restrictions

Similarly, many stay-at-home orders and other orders requiring reduced business operation or closures include exemptions or other exceptions for activities relating to the sale or purchase of fresh foods, gardening, farming, hunting, or fishing activities. Municipalities have defined food cultivation services as essential services allowed to continue during stay-at-home orders, including agriculture, agriculture-related services, hunting, and fishing.⁴⁵ To promote fresh food purchases, municipalities have also defined certified farmers’ markets, food produce stands, farm-to-consumer programs, and other fresh food sales as essential services allowed to continue during stay-at-home orders.⁴⁶

Other Supports for Fresh Food Sales, Cultivation, Hunting, and Fishing

Additionally, municipalities are specifically offering funding, flexibilities, or incentives to encourage food cultivation, hunting, fishing, and sales during the pandemic. For example, some are recognizing that license requirements or fees may impede involvement with certain fresh food cultivation and similar activities. Some municipalities have promoted local gardening by waiving fees and restrictions for urban agriculture programs, like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has identified that urban farming will help “Pittsburgh neighborhoods to recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic and insulate communities against the impacts of future crises.”⁴⁷ Other municipalities have waived license requirements to allow fishing to continue.⁴⁸

Madison, Wisconsin, has allocated previously authorized funds for partnership with designated groups that are prioritizing COVID-19 needs via local produce use.⁴⁹ For example, one of the partner organizations is using $4,500 to fund meal deliveries and food boxes with local produce.⁵⁰ Other organizations are using the funds to invest in food pantry gardens or neighborhood harvest gardens.⁵¹ Another jurisdiction that is prioritizing fresh food is Dekalb County, Georgia, where the county has allocated $600,000 of CARES funding for use in distributing fresh food baskets via mobile trucks to local residents who lack access to fresh food.⁵² These examples function within category A “Food Assistance Funding, Support, and Directives” as they allocate grants and CARES funds. However, they are included here as they specifically promote local and fresh foods.

Laws that Require or Promote Safer Access to Food Establishments that Serve Priority Populations

Given its highly contagious nature, the COVID-19 virus has made food access at food stores and other venues especially challenging for medically vulnerable persons.⁵³ Municipalities are responding by enacting measures to ensure safer access to food establishments.⁵⁴ These include laws that support safer access to food at grocery stores, farmers’ markets, food stands, hunger relief organizations, nursing homes, hospitals, etc., through measures such as special shopping or dining hours, mask requirements, and social distancing.

Some municipalities are requiring grocery stores to reserve exclusive hours for seniors and other high-risk populations to shop, usually in the morning, so that the store is freshly cleaned with a limited capacity.⁵⁵ Other municipalities are enacting ordinances to require food access points, including grocery stores and nonprofit food banks, to follow CDC guidelines such as social distancing, mask requirements, and enhanced cleaning procedures.⁵⁶

Conclusion

As the pandemic continues to affect food security, the Healthy Food Policy Project team will continue to monitor COVID-19-related municipal food access policies throughout the country and will update the Project’s COVID-19 Food Access Municipal Policy Index. We anticipate that over the next few months, local policy strategies will evolve to address new challenges, including the expiration of federal CARES Act funding, ongoing and increasing unemployment statistics, continuing school closures, and increasing rates of COVID-19 infection. We urge municipalities to review and build on what other jurisdictions have already done and continue to assist the ongoing and demanding need for safe, effective food access in their communities.