Calling low-income areas ‘opportunity zones’ doesn’t help anyone
“In an attempt to finally help people recover from the recession, states across the country have embraced a federal program that allows them to designate under-resourced Census tracts as ‘opportunity zones.’ The opportunity zones program was first envisioned by the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank whose mission is to ‘empower entrepreneurs and investors to forge a more dynamic economy throughout America,’ and was included in last year’s Republican tax bill. The idea is that if the government incentivizes real estate development and business investments in certain low-income areas — the so-called ‘opportunity zones,’ which are chosen by state governors — regular people will benefit. A Brookings Institution report from earlier this month found that 59 percent of areas designated as opportunity zones were in ‘economically distressed’ areas. In the best-case scenario, developers will use these incentives to build quality affordable housing for middle- and low-income people, particularly in rapidly-gentrifying cities like San Francisco and New York. However, it’s just as likely that opportunity zones are just another form of corporate welfare that won’t trickle down to the masses.”