By Caroline Flannery
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Baltimore City Councilman Brandon Scott, a Park Heights native, grew up noticing that when food establishments in his neighborhood closed, the people in his community were never aware of the reason behind it.
Prioritizing government transparency as well as the health of city residents, Scott — along with Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen — made city history in 2016 by introducing a website that gave residents the ability to look up restaurants and view health inspection reports.
While Scott’s bill that proposed the idea of implementing a restaurant health grading system lost by one vote, he immediately came back with a bill to make all food establishment closures easily accessible online.
“This is to highlight and focus on the worst of the worst,” Scott said. “And that’s why we did it, because this is about health.”
Scott points out that these restaurant closures have an importance that is commonly missed, and a connection to a problem that plagues Baltimore: violence and poverty.
“In East and West Baltimore, where you see most of these [health violations] happen, these neighborhoods are also the ones where the food deserts are, where the violence is, and these things are interconnected,” Scott said.
Transparency and accountability are needed to address this situation, according to Scott.
“We have to understand that we have to hold these businesses more accountable because we know that this is contributing to the bad things that are happening in neighborhoods,” he said.
Since his movement to increase restaurant transparency began, Scott says citizens have been reaching out on social media to inform him of health or safety violations.
“This is one of the most popular things that the health department, the city and myself put on social media,” Scott said. “We get complaints now, I get tons of them from people who see stuff happening at restaurants and they send us videos, leading to more closures.”
Scott said that this positive response to online accessibility shows the results that increased transparency can have on a community and supports his push for a grading system.
“We know people are paying attention to what they see, because we see stuff being shared over and over again,” Scott said. “That’s what the desired impact was, to have people know what’s going on in the city, and now there’s a groundswell support as we will again discuss full on restaurant grading as the citizens of Baltimore have made it clear that they want this to happen.”
Scott said that the bill for restaurant grading has been reintroduced and he hopes it will be passed sometime this fall.
While the response to the website has been mostly positive, a few restaurant owners have complained that this is hurting their business, according to Scott.
“They’ll see it on social media and say that it’s unfair to their business, it was just one instance,” Scott said. “But the truth is that one instance is still an instance, no one is saying you can’t recover, but the health department is very clear about why the places are closed.”
An analysis of the data shows that rodent/insect infestations were the most common violations that led to closures in 2017, with 73 instances. This was followed up closely by licensing violations, with 71 instances, and unsanitary conditions, with 70 instances, according to the Baltimore City Department of Health.
Scott said that with this information being made public, businesses are now more inclined to invest in rodent control companies to get the problem fixed.
Neighborhoods that are home to many carry-out establishments that have frequent violations typically are categorized as “healthy priority areas,” which tend to disproportionately affect black communities.
Called “food deserts” in the past, the new name is more accurate, as the problem is not a lack of food, but a disproportionate amount of access to unhealthy foods.
To be considered a “healthy priority area,” a neighborhood must have a low measure of food store quality, a low median income, have more than 30 percent of households without cars and be more than a quarter-mile from a supermarket.
“Some of these carry-out places are in healthy priority areas are places where people are feeding their children dinner from consistently and they shouldn’t have to do that regardless of the financial situation that they live in,” Scott said.
Scott said the reason he fought so hard for his bill was for the health of the people of Baltimore.
“When you already don’t have access to fresh food, and then the food that they’re eating which is inherently bad and then you have rat feces on the food too, that can have a terrible effect on people in the community,” Scott said.
Thirty-one percent of closures in 2017 fell into the category of markets, which typically consist of the corner stores that are in healthy priority areas, and 28 percent of closures fell into the category of carry-out establishments that are also typically in healthy priority areas.
Tyree Pounds, a recreation leader at Rita Church Community Center, sees the effect that the lack of awareness and accessibility of food establishments can have on youth.
Working at an after-school recreation center for children ages 5 to 17, Pounds says he is disheartened to see children coming in everyday with carry-out and junk food.
“The parents don’t know of healthy alternatives, this is what people in these parts of the city eat,” Pounds said.
Pounds said he travels far from his East Baltimore home to get his food in order to avoid the unsanitary places.
“It’s interesting that there aren’t any fresh healthy food stores in my neighborhood, but there seems to be a fast-food establishment every 5 miles or so,” Pounds said.
Pounds said he hopes parents are more knowledgeable about what places are safe for their kids now that the information is so easily accessible.