Eligibility

America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative offers resources to improve access to healthy foods in underserved areas, create and preserve quality jobs, and revitalize low-income communities by providing financial and technical assistance, either directly or through other partners and intermediaries, to eligible fresh, healthy food retailers and enterprises to overcome the higher costs and initial barriers to entry in underserved areas.

Eligible projects must:

  • Plan to expand or preserve the availability of staple and perishable foods in underserved areas with low and moderate-income populations; and
  • If the project involves retail sales, accept benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) established under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (7 USC 2011 et. Seq.)

 

LOCATION ELIGIBILITY

HFFI funds support projects that serve eligible Underserved Areas. You can use the interactive map below to identify underserved areas across the country.

The HFFI Eligibility map layer includes the following criteria which indicate eligibility for the HFFI program:

  • USDA’s 2019 Low Income Low Access (LILA) census tracts
  • Census tracts adjacent to USDA’s 2019 LILA census tracts with median family incomes less than or equal to 120 percent of area median family income
  • Reinvestment Fund’s 2016 Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) Areas

This map will be updated with the latest available data, when it becomes available. We anticipate an update to the LSA areas in the Fall of 2023. Other areas not indicated on this map that have low access to supermarkets or grocery stores under another methodology that has been adopted for use by government or philanthropic healthy food initiatives may also be eligible for this program. If you have any questions or want to confirm whether a location is eligible, please contact us.

There are additional data layers in the map below that share information on income, availability of food nutrition programs, as well as NMTC and CDBG eligibility that may be helpful in your planning or application process. You can view additional data by clicking on the “New Map” icon on the upper left and selecting a different data layer. Click on any shaded area of the map to find the exact value for that location.

Any other specific eligibility requirements will be described in the Request for Applications (RFA) of the relevant funding opportunity.

Data mapped by PolicyMap, an online GIS mapping tool.