Back to food deserts

So I’m back to food deserts, due to a comment I received which interpreted my prior comments as criticism of the box-toting woman making her way, via bus, home from the grocery store, rather than of the activists pressing for more stores rather than transportation improvements.

This is what I’m thinking:

it seems obvious to me that, were I in that situation, I’d buy myself a utility/shopping cart, pronto.  Something like this: 
 ($36.99 at Amazon)

or this:
 ($47.99)

or maybe this, which looks most like what I saw often in Europe:

  ($38.99)

Heck, I’ve occasionally contemplated buying such shopping carts in bulk and giving them out to those who are obliged to do their shopping via mass transit. I’d buy a cart for this very woman if it would make a difference.

But obviously this woman hasn’t.  And though almost certainly I have more education than she does, she certainly has more common sense than I do, when it comes to the practicalities of living at a low income in the city.  So there must be some reason why she hasn’t bought a utility cart.  Is there too great a risk of it being stolen and sold for scrap? (I read not long ago that the absence of bikes in the city is due to theft.) Does the CTA not allow utility/shopping carts on the bus? (If so: FIX THAT RULE.) Is even the modest cost of such a cart too much? Do local stores not sell such carts?

This is an honest non-rhetorical question.