Opportunity Zone Program and Who it Left Behind

 WM Oversight: The Opportunity Zone Program and Who It Left Behind, November 16, 2021

The title of this hearing is ironic. The question isn't who was left behind, but who was pushed out. Opportunity zones are the flavor of the decade, proceeding from enterprise, urban renewal and the destruction of neighborhoods in order to bring Interstate Highways to cities. 

Worse than redlining and segregation, urban renewal, which the civil rights community calls Negro Relocation. Hispanic neighborhoods are also suffering the same fate. Time and again, poorer residents are moved to the suburbs so that coffee shops, high end grocery stores and luxury apartments can be built for professionals, also known as the creative class. In short, young and middle aged white people  with high incomes. 

Developers bridge the gap between property acquisition and sale so that those who are displaced leave with lower payments while the developers benefit from any increase in property values. Such actions are why Henry George proposed pergovian land value tax, collecting 100% of land value each year and then distributing a citizens dividend to everyone (so that poorer people benefit from the price loss experienced by high end developers.

I usually do not endorse Georgism as the sole solution to inequality. Creating cooperatives that democratically give members control of the means of production, consumption, human services and finance is more my speed; but even I would have the cooperative pay a land value tax to fund services for those who continue to live in a Smart Growth area dominated by such a cooperative. It would continue to fund services after any relocation (unless families wish to join the cooperative.

In the interim, Opportunity Zone provision should be repealed. We need no more displacement from here on in.  Human capital investment, along the lines of what was proposed in the original Build Back Better proposal, with our submission on the doubling down on what the President has proposed, is included in the first attachment. 

A second attachment addresses the overall approach to delivering human services in the long term, including any items which the legislation leaves out.

Attachment: Expanding Education

Attachment: Human Services