Member Access to New EIG Release — “Opportunity Zones: State of the Marketplace”
The IPA continues to actively testify and advocate on behalf of Qualified Opportunity Funds (QOFs) and to support this important new finance tool through many of its direct coalition engagements, one of which includes our Economic Innovation Group (EIG) membership.
The EIG recently released an excellent paper exploring the OZ policy’s promising early results and the improvements needed to boost its impact. We are pleased to provide our members access to this newly released paper. We believe you will find the information of great value as we continue as an industry to advocate for further legislative and regulatory improvements necessary to help ensure the policy fulfills its promise. https://eig.org/oz-state-of-the-marketplace
The paper takes stock of where we are three years since OZs were passed into law and one year since final regulations. The OZ concept is largely proving itself in numerous communities across the country and can be considered a disruptive success, but still needs reforms to magnify its many benefits.
For the first two years after OZs passed into law, the public discourse brimmed with hype and speculation about what might transpire once this unusually open-ended, flexible new development finance tool hit the market. Since final regulations were promulgated in December 2019, the OZ conversation has steadily moved beyond hypotheticals and into the realm of the observable. Mystery is dissolving away into practiced familiarity as more deals get done, best practices get established, and innovative use cases get replicated. At the same time, much remains to be done to educate investors, local leaders, and other potential market players on the incentive and how it functions. Broadly, the early 2020s are shaping up to be a “proof of concept” phase for the policy. The early results are promising but also suggest that further tweaks to the policy will be necessary.
As the OZ market reaches critical stages of maturation in 2021, we encourage you to read this paper and welcome your engagement as we continue to seek innovation and contemplate needed reforms to maximize OZs’ contribution to an equitable recovery from the pandemic recession and beyond.
Members also may visit the IPA’s website for a comprehensive overview of our 2021 Policy Priorities and to stay current on other advocacy initiatives. It is a pleasure to engage with our members. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Thank you for your partnership,
Tony Chereso
President and CEO
Institute for Portfolio Alternatives
