icon Blueprint for December

Aspirational Development

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Today, just as we finish editing this issue, a letter with signatures representing 1,000 organizations and companies has been delivered to the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee urging for extension of the New Markets Tax Credit program, which is due to expire at the end of this year.

The mere fact that the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition has to make this effort 19 years into an ultra-successful program that has supported over 6,000 new difficult-to-fund community projects, over one million jobs and improved economically troubled communities throughout the country is extremely disappointing. It’s one of those crude federal government dilemmas that forces us to ask, what kind of people would consider destroying something like this?

As you will read in Mark Olshaker’s lead-in to this issue’s focus on Saving New Markets Tax Credits, there are rumblings that the genius behind this discouraging move might be the administration’s preference for its Opportunity Zone program, which the President touted as one of his great accomplishments at a recent campaign rally. To date, Opportunity Zones have accomplished nothing except make exceptions for designated locations to benefit projects of wealthy Republican funders Michael Milken and Wayne Huzienga, as reported in a New York Times editorial this past Sunday. And even if Opportunity Zones turn out to be a viable new funding source for underserved communities, it has a long way to go to build a record to match NMTC. It’s passing on the steak to try the cake before the cake is even baked.

Over the years, we have published case studies of community service projects—health centers, job training centers, schools, etc.—that most likely would not have been built without NMTCs, stories that tend not just to inform but also to stir the emotions. We are moved because these projects so obviously improve difficult lives and often trigger further development and renewed hope in struggling communities. There are no better arguments for establishing permanence of this program.

In this issue, our staff writer Mark Fogarty reports on two new aspirational projects:

The RYSE Commons, in Richmond, CA, north of Oakland, was conceived as a refuge from urban violence for young women and men, replacing the sound of gunshots in a once troubled community with song and health and hope. In Mark’s piece you hear directly from those whose lives have been altered by the existence of RYSE. (Using NMTC to Combat Urban Violence)

The Explore! Community School is Nashville’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority’s anchor and driver for attracting middle-class renters to its 2,000 unit Envision Cayce complex and convert what was once a neighborhood steeped in poverty into a mixed-use, mixed-income community.

Envision Cayce will include other amenities, like a health center and a YMCA, but, as Fogarty reports, it all begins with a quality school. (Envision Cayce is More Than Just Housing)

We will continue to advocate for the New Markets Tax Credit program by telling more stories that provide inescapable evidence of the glory of this program. At a time when so much that goes on in government makes so many of us feel bad, here’s a program that should make everyone feel good.

Marty Bell, Editor