“With the creation of today’s council, the resources of the whole federal government will be leveraged to rebuild low-income and impoverished neighborhoods that have been ignored by Washington in years past,” the president said at a Wednesday event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where an executive order establishing the council was signed.
Our goal is to ensure that America’s great new prosperity is broadly shared by all of our citizens. Our country is doing better than ever, economically, and we’re able to do that.”
The council will be led by Ben Carson, head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Today, the nation’s unemployment rate is at a 49-year low. Jobless rates among African-Americans down to a record low of 5.9 percent. Wages on the rise,” Carson said. “While we can all be proud of these achievements, one challenge has remained: There are still communities in our country that have seen little or no new investment in generations.”
According to The Baltimore Sun, the new program will offer breaks on capital gains taxes to investors in distressed zones — obviously a huge boost to predominately black and minority neighborhoods, which are still lagging in indicators like wage growth.
The opportunity zones, Carson said, “are home to approximately 35 million Americans. The Department of Treasury estimates that the Opportunity Zone legislation could attract over $100 billion in private investment, which will go a long way to spur on jobs and economic development.
“This kind of medicine is precisely what a doctor would prescribe to heal communities where nearly 1 in 3 people live in poverty, and unemployment is nearly twice the national average.”
