America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) is a public-private partnership administered by Reinvestment Fund, a national mission-driven community development financial institution, on behalf of USDA Rural Development. HFFI was established by the 2014 Farm Bill and reauthorized in 2018.
The HFFI Program provides financial and technical assistance to eligible organizations that are working to plan or develop a food retail outlet or food supply chain business model that will improve access to staple and perishable foods in underserved areas through SNAP eligible food retailers. Eligible underserved areas include:
- USDA’s 2019 USDA Low Income Low Access census tracts
- Census tracts with median family incomes less than or equal to 120 percent of area median family income that are adjacent to USDA’s 2019 LILA census tracts
- Geographic Areas that meet the criteria as having low access to supermarkets or grocery stores through a methodology that has been adopted for use by another government or philanthropic healthy food initiative or demonstrates other criteria describing low access to supermarkets or grocery stores for an underserved community.