The City owns the property and a non-profit runs the store.

Actually I think the intentions are good. They are government schooled people, never learned sound economics, thus don't understand things like price signals. They literally did a micro communism experiment, and the outcome was exactly as real (Austrian) economists would have predicted.

The road to hell is paved by good intentions......

Lets learn from this micro experiment, and don't try #communism ever again.