icon Blueprint for March

Four Wins

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3 min read

It’s spring training time, when everyone is optimistic and hopes they can win the World Series.

Like teams in the World Series, the Opportunity Zone program aims for four wins. (Preferably without cheating, despite reports that some players have already been accused of trying Astros-type stunts.) The wins are overall improvement in the communities where the funds are directed; housing, services and jobs for the residents of those communities; additional funding for the housing developers and business owners; and a tax break for the investors in the funds.

Skepticism may now trump optimism as our national mood, and so it may not be surprising that there have been questions about the actual intent of the program we call OZones. Will the OZones really be a boon for our underserved communities? Or is it a tax break in search of a purpose?

“What we know now is that investors are robustly responding to the tax incentive,” renown economist Jared Bernstein tells Darryl Hicks in this month’s Talking Heads feature. “It will take considerably more time and careful assessment to determine if the program is truly helping to support and revitalize poor areas that have long suffered from underinvestment.”

“We (affordable housing) may be legislated into the OZone, but once there we’re priced out by competing uses,” writes David A. Smith in The Guru Is In.

And Fred Copeman, who administers Boston Financial’s Opportunity Fund tells staff writer Mark Olshaker, “In affordable housing, the wins are few and far between.” (Whose Opportunity Is It Anyway?)

But like the players taking the field on the first day of spring training, we choose to remain optimistic. In this issue, we take a look at the OZone program two years into its conception with hope that it heads in the intended direction and suggestions of strategies that can lead to wins.

“Instead of ruing our misfortune,” David Smith continues, “if we in affordable housing want to use the OZone incentives, it’s up to us to bring our own supplementary incentives.”

As you read on, in addition to recommendations from the guru, you will find a menu of actions suggested by NH&RA President Thom Amdur about complementary federal, state and local government initiatives that spread the benefits of OZone development. (New Developments) You will find an assessment of the final rules from attorneys Jerry Breed and John Gahan in conversation with NH&RA Policy Director Kaitlyn Snyder. (Forming More Perfect Regulations)

In addition to his conversation with Copeman, Olshaker talks with organizers of half a dozen additional Opportunity Funds all around the country about their goals, their fundraising efforts, their investors and the progress of their projects. He also highlights NLCIC’s conversion of the historic St. Michael’s Medical Center into the Newark Arts Commons, an ambitious project that manages to utilize Historic and New Markets Tax Credits along with Opportunity Fund financing.

In this season of hope, ours is that these pages will inspire you to contribute to the four societal wins.

So let’s play ball!

Marty Bell, Editor