Opinion: To eliminate food deserts, consider public grocery stores – Crain’s*

Ameya Pawar, former member of the Chicago City Council and appointee to the Illinois Finance Authority/Climate Bank: "In most cases, governments launched public options as common-sense enterprises to meet a community's needs. But despite ample evidence of their efficacy, they have yet to be taken seriously as a tool to tackle food deserts. And that's unfortunate, because where there are food deserts, there are almost always banking, child care, health care and every other type of desert, too. Public options could be a potent force to tackle them. This is where Illinois is flipping the script."