TR-HNR-July-2019

FEATURED ARTICLE

Will Opportunity Zones Boost America’s Distressed Neighborhoods?

BY PETER G. MILLER

Verizon has just named the 50 best small cities to start a small busi- ness and it’s a great list. A lot of small communities are expanding their job base, but what’s happen- ing in these leading towns with between 50,000 and 75,000 people is not true everywhere.

We increasingly have a divided economy. At one end are world cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, Wash- ington, New York and Boston as well as some small-but-success- ful towns such as those named by Verizon. At the same time, we also

have thousands of census tracts that haven’t kept up: neighbor- hoods where jobs are leaving, tax collections are down and people are moving away. It is in these areas where newly-minted op- portunity zones – also known as “O-zones” or “OZ” – can hopefully

6 think realty housing news report

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