Huge Opportunities Begin to Turn Real in Opportunity Zones
November 13, 2023
"We need more data.”
It’s the rallying cry of every scientist, researcher, policymaker, baseball general manager of the “Moneyball” school and journalist reporting out an ambitious story.
Ambition for change in community circumstances was at the heart of the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program when it was enacted in December 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But change takes time.
Early returns on such programs can be as misleading or inconclusive as early returns on election night. When the real data start to stream in — in OZs’ case, after several years of regulation promulgation and then actual investment across the 8,000 designated high-poverty zones — a clearer picture emerges.
