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I don't know if it's a disaster waiting to happen, I would venture probably funding and some glazing arcicles can paper over a failure for as long as the media feels like they should support this (as long as keeping the socialists on-side against Trump). Maybe excessively fund one or two nicer ones, potemkin grocery stores if you will, so the media can go and film reports there about what a success it is.
There are domains where the question of whether private vs public is better not fully resolved, or at least where there are significant zone of shadow, ambiguity or compromise. Healthcare, public security, etc... Grocery stores and food supply is not one of them. Grocery stores is an issue that has been thoroughly adjudicated during the Cold War and capitalism has been found to win it so overwhelmingly that within the lore it's a large contributor to the end of the Soviet Union (you know the one, the 80s story about Yelstin's visit to a random American grocery store). Food availability, distribution, accessibility across the socioeconomic spectrum has been found to be massively better in market economies compared to command economies. That market works about as efficiently as anyone could hope. If private operators are unwilling to serve a specific market, it's not because they are unwilling to take meager profits or because poor people's money is icky, it's because there are not profits to be made at all for some reason. There are grocery stores in some really horrible neighborhoods, and if it was possible to run them profitably in some other horrible neighborhoods, someone would. As you mention, they need to consider and fix why some places just aren't profitable to run a grocery store in. Throwing public money at the issue is not going to fix it.
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