To Save a Neighborhood, Ban a Dollar Store?
17th July 2019
In northeast Oklahoma City, you can find plenty of stores that sell groceries, but only two are grocery stores. Some are convenience stores or gas stations, and the rest are dollar stores—now more common in the United States than both Walmart and McDonald’s combined. This influx of dollar stores, according to the Oklahoma City city council, is a major public-health problem.
“Better options are necessary for our community, beginning with policy to prevent small box discount stores from saturating these areas in particular,” Councilwoman Nikki Nice, whose ward is about 23 percent low income, tweeted.
In May, Nice helped pass a moratorium on constructing or issuing building permits to convenience stores located within one mile of another, working on the assumption that, once dollar stores are banned, grocery stores will come. The ban lasts for 180 days, or until November of 2019, when the council plans to introduce a zoning ordinance to bring stores with fresh meat and produce to the district, the Journal Record reports.
Every politician thinks that he or she has a better idea than the free market for how you ought to spend your money.
This sort of thinking is why California is a train wreck and likely will continue to get worse.