Latest / Earn Your Leisure / Opportunity Zones: Economic Growth, Wage Increases, and Community Benefits Explained by Tim Scott

Transcript

Opportunity Zones: Economic Growth, Wage Increases, and Community Benefits Explained by Tim Scott · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and sure they definitely can be, but understanding a professionals
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It might seem boring to safe plan and make calculated
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: what helps you live or more happily fulfilled life. P
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: National Association Member FDIC.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Erness What's Up?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: works like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square? We
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: love supporting business that run on Square because it just
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: at a pop up market, or even one of our
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: one simple system. If you're a business owner or even
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: one of the best tools out there to help you start,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: run and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: giving you time back so you can focus on what
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: visit Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: That's Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: can keep pushing your vision forward.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: A lot of people still are not familiar with opportunity,
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: like they heard of it, but they don't really know
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: what it is or how people have benefited from it.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So since you were a part of it, can you
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: kind of explain your work in the opportunity zones and
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: where does that stand currently?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Sure?
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: So number one, let me just say I always say
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: that the why is more important than the what, and
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: so for me, the why was I grew up in
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: a single parent household mired in poverty in North Charleston,
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: South Carolina, and one of the things I recognized as
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: a lawmaker was that so often opportunities were elusive for
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: us who lived in the wrong zip code, And so
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: when I designed the Opportunity Zone project, it was designed
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: around the why I felt like, if I could bring
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: the resources back to the community, more kids who were
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: smarter than I would have more opportunities than I had
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: when I was growing up. And so the why opportunity
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: zones were even created was because I understood personally watching
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: some of the smartest people I've seen on the planet,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: we just lived in the wrong zip code. If I
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: could help those kids be empowered to make the difference
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: in their own lives and their mama's lives, then the
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: world would be a better place because these kids deserve
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: the greatest access that anybody else I've seen, and too
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: many of them had too few opportunities. So that's the
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: why behind opportunity zones. Opportunities zones did two things. Basically.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: Number one, it gave two incentives that those who had
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: capital to take a look at the hardest hit economic
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: areas in the country. Those areas would be designated by
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: the governors of the states, not those of us in Washington,
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: because Lord knows people in Washington cannot define poverty in
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: North Charleston, South Carolina, or Simpsonville, South Carolina, or someplace
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: in Arkansas or Iowa. That has to be done by
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: people closer to the challenging areas themselves. And so the
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: governors were given the power to designate within their states
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: the areas that are considered by the low income areas.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Probably three quarters of.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: Those areas are majority minority in most states, not all states,
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: but at the end of the day, it was happened
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: since the creation of those zones. We gave two incentives
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: to investors. One was a five year investment, you would
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: get a ten percent step up in your basis. A
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: seven year investment you get a fifteen percent step up
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: in your basis. That is attracted into the opportunity zones nationwide,
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: somewhere near seventy billion dollars of commitments and investments in
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: the poorest areas of our country, leading to a twenty
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: percent increase in property values, with over sixty percent of
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: the people living in opportunity zones owning their own property.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: So that's one of the ways that you actually create
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: equity and seeing those property values go up. Number two,
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: it saw wage growth go around eight percent versus the
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: average in our country during those years was around three
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: point two percent. And then finally we saw access to
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: opportunity because we saw more entrepreneurs creating jobs and opportunity.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Zones that we saw before.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: So wage growth was up, property values was up, and
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: the good news is gentrification was under five percent for
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: those seven years that we've had. Opportunity zones expires next year,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: so we're gonna have to go back to the drawing
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: board to get the next round of opportunity zones available
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: for the market.
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: From my perspective, it sounds like from what you're saying
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: that you know everything that you just laid out, that
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: you feel like this has worked. I wonder, and you
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: can correct me if I'm wrong. In order to even
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: invest in opportunity zones, you have to use capital gains,
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: and that's where financial education comes into it, really, right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: because a lot of us have to even have accounts
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: to have capital gains. And so I wonder, how do
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: you make sure that the average person or the average
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: entrepreneur is able to invest if they don't even have
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: privilege or even understand that process.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've had a ton of events around the country.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, this is one of those
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: biparts and coalitions that put the heat during the role
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: of the opportunity zones. I went across the country. I
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: did an event in DC with Mayor Bowser. She and
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: I went into Ward seven Ward eight and did an
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: Opportunity Zone event where we had over four hundred folks
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: show up and we talked about the incentives at the
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: city was laying on top of the national framework of
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: the opportunity zones.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: We've seen that happen throughout the country.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: I was in South Carolina, rock Hill, South Carolina, with
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: a good friend of mine who's a Democrat. Mayor John
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: Getty's in rock Hill, and he said, because of opportunity zones,
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: he's seen the first affordable housing come back to the
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: city in more than three decades.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: So what we did was we did another event there.
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: I brought in minority investors, including TI and many others
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: to have a roundtable discussion to make sure that our
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: community understood the advantages, the challenges, and the real time
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: opportunities being presented through the opportunity zones. We did that
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: four or five years ago. We had investors around the country.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: We had Bishop Jakes working in Georgia with Opportunities One
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: legislation working in the area to create more affordable housing,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: and so we've seen an uptake of folks coming across
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: the country looking for ways to get invested in there.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: But the good news is opportunity zones and having a
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: qualified opportunity fund only requires one person with a capital
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: gains tax burden who wants to reduce that burden. That
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: one individual can create their own qualified Opportunity Zone fund.
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: But the advantage was you have to stay for.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: The long term. I don't want running and gunning.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: I don't want you coming into community, make a couple
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: of dollars and running back out. All the incentives required
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: a five year or longer investment and getting that information
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: out to the community. It's one of the things that
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: we worked on through the seminars, the events, the meetings,
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: and then a national rollout that happened in twenty eighteen
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: twenty nineteen twenty twenty. We're on the tail end of
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: the Opportunity Zone, so we're going to have to have
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: that kind of rollout again so more people will have
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: more information to make the right decision to reinvest in
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: the community.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: They come from.
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: in Massachusetts, an MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
• 8:26
  Speaker 6: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
• 8:30
  Speaker 6: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
• 8:38
  Speaker 6: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy Noman, the United States
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border
• 8:46
  Speaker 6: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and deported, you will
• 9:01
  Speaker 6: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: border and families will be protected.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,