In Southeast San Diego, Neighbors Are Building 'Food Dignity' From the Ground Up

In the neighborhoods of southeastern San Diego, healthy food can be surprisingly hard to find. "There are many fast-food and junk-food establishments, but very few healthy food outlets," says Diane Moss, co-founder of Project New Village, a nonprofit that has worked in the community since 1994. In a county where 26 percent of people face food insecurity — and where the local poverty rate runs up to three times the county average — that scarcity is not an accident but the product of decades of disinvestment. As Reasons to be Cheerful reported in April 2026, residents are now rewriting that story themselves.

At the heart of the effort is the Mt. Hope Community Garden, a place where neighbors grow fresh vegetables and, just as importantly, grow connection. Resident Ami Young says the work "brings food dignity to a community lacking in neighborhood healthy food choices." That phrase — food dignity — captures the project's deeper aim. This is not about handing out surplus produce, but about residents controlling how food is grown, sold and shared in their own neighborhood, on their own terms.

“"There are many fast-food and junk-food establishments, but very few healthy food outlets," says Diane Moss, co-founder of Project New Village, a nonprofit that has worked in the community since 1994.”

Project New Village is part of an emerging model called Equitable Food Oriented Development, or EFOD, which treats food as an engine for building lasting community wealth rather than a one-time act of charity. The organization is the only EFOD group in San Diego, and its boldest step is still ahead: a planned $10 million food hub called The Village, set to open in 2027, that will bring grocery, kitchen and gathering space under one roof. The San Diego Foundation has awarded $2.5 million to hunger-fighting programs in the region to help such efforts take hold.

The timing is difficult — local nonprofits face roughly $300 million in annual federal cuts, a strain that makes community-owned solutions feel less like an option and more like a necessity. Yet the people of southeastern San Diego are choosing resilience over resignation. By planting gardens, building a food hub and insisting that fresh food and dignity belong together, they are showing that a neighborhood long treated as a food desert can become, instead, fertile ground for both nourishment and ownership.