President Trump describes the opportunity zone program as a prime example of how his administration has helped African Americans. This June, Trump claimed that since 2017 “countless jobs and $100 billion of new investment, not government investment, have poured into 9,000 of our most distressed neighborhoods anywhere in the country.” Opportunity zones have also been talked up by the few prominent African American Trump allies, including Sen. Tim Scott (one of the bill’s original co-sponsors) and HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Scott called opportunity zones “the first new, major effort to tackle poverty in a generation.”

Yet the program has been troubled since the beginning. Governors were permitted to select their state’s opportunity zones, with few criteria: 95 percent of the zones had to have a 20 percent poverty rate or a median income that is 80 percent or less of the metro area’s median income. Governors could also designate five percent of the zones in areas that are not low income. That latitude resulted in developments ranging from luxury apartment buildings to a ”superyacht” club being designated as eligible for opportunity zone tax breaks. Reporting from the New York Times, ProPublica and other news outlets revealed that friends and relatives of the president — including son-in-law Jared Kushner — stood to benefit from the opportunity zone tax break, and Treasury is already conducting a corruption investigation.

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Governors looking to tout the success of opportunity zones in their state had incentives to pick areas with development projects already planned or underway — such as areas adjacent to or including a college or university. Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, found 33 opportunity zones in areas where 85 percent or more of the population are enrolled in college. The zones meet the low-income threshold, but that’s because students don’t typically earn much while taking classes.

Designating these areas as opportunity zones because of students’ lack of income is a cynical use of an antipoverty program. Universities have been creating pockets of wealth near their campuses for decades, driving up rents without benefitting the long term residents who will remain long after each class graduates.

In West Philadelphia, for instance, real estate investment in areas near universities has already changed the face of the historically African American neighborhood. West Philly is home to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. The University of Pennsylvania lured professors and students to the area with tactics that ranged from installing streetlights to offering low-interest loans to encourage faculty to buy in the area, and even created a new public elementary school to offer an option for an elite education in the neighborhood. Their tactics were so successful that the average selling price of a home rose from $78,500 in 1995 to half a million dollars by 2018. Drexel is now borrowing directly from Penn’s playbook, including building a new public middle school.

Drexel is just one of the 33 universities mentioned in the Brookings report. In the opportunity zone that includes Drexel, the poverty rate is 66 percent and 88 percent of residents are enrolled in college full time. Those statistics are reflected in college towns selected as opportunity zones across the country. The University of Southern California, surrounded by a historically low-income area of Los Angeles, is located in an opportunity zone with a poverty rate of 88 percent. A whopping 99 percent of residents, however, are full time college students. College students at small private universities (such as Liberty College) and behemoth public institutions alike (such as Texas A&M) are making their towns and neighborhoods eligible for a designation intended to help areas that have struggled with generational poverty.

Mantua and Drexel’s campus are in the same opportunity zone. A $43 million project dubbed the Village Square on Haverford got the go-ahead from the city in late 2019. It will bring 166 new apartments and townhomes to the opportunity zone in Mantua, with 80 units flagged as “workforce housing” with their selling price capped $230,000. That’s significantly higher than Philadelphia’s average home sale price of $188,000, and well out of reach for Mantua residents, whose income is less than half of the city’s median. The development will include 32 rental units of affordable housing, though there has been no word as yet about what definition of affordable the developers will use. The new development is located just a few blocks away from an off-campus housing complex marketed to students at Penn and Drexel.

Mantua residents have organized to have a say in how their neighborhood changes. They settled on a push to rezone most of the neighborhood as single-family housing, which they intended to prevent developers from buying up blocks of Mantua and converting the area into student housing for Drexel. They were successful, but the rezoning may not pay off in the long term. “It’s really a conundrum for the community to be in,” Wright said. “Multifamily [zoning] could potentially create naturally occurring affordable housing in the neighborhood because you can have apartments that might be available to lower-income or moderate-income people.” Focusing on protecting single-family homes means fewer available rentals — and higher rents.

That’s a problem, because people in the rental market may be the most vulnerable to changes in the housing market, according to sociologist Susan Clampet-Lundquist, professor at Philadelphia’s St. Joseph’s University and University City resident. Overall, changing neighborhoods are a mixed bag for longtime residents. The changes do bring more amenities to the area. The Village Square on Haverford, for instance, will include a supermarket and a coffee shop. Homeowners will likely see the values of their property go up. But the story is different for renters. When people leave a rental, they are unlikely to find another unit at a similar monthly cost and may have to leave the neighborhood, a process of indirect displacement.

“To me, the most important part is indirect displacement, a reduction in affordable housing,” said Clampet-Lundquist. “That creates the demographic change that you end up seeing.”

Mantua residents aren’t necessarily opposed to college students in the neighborhood, Wright said. They don’t begrudge the developers now showing up because they will turn a profit. They just want to make sure they can stay in their homes and enjoy the benefits of those changes, too.

Politicians ranging from Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to Joe Biden have proposed changes to opportunity zones, from defunding the program (AOC) to reforming it (Biden). Biden’s reform plans don’t include specific housing protections for people in opportunity zones such as Mantua. And existing local and federal programs could help with this particular problem, including rent control, Section 8 housing vouchers, and assistance programs for long-term residents that subsidize the inevitable rise in property taxes, Clampet-Lundquist said.

Using these programs to help in cities where opportunity zones meet skyrocketing real estate prices could limit the damage to low-income areas. So would an acknowledgment that incentives designed to maximize return on investment for the wealthy may not be the best way to address poverty.

“I would buy Flamin’ Hots with melted cheese and ground beef and that was like a whole damn meal. We would buy penny candy, lemon and strawberry cookies, snow cones. We would buy anything related to snacks or junk food now that would be a health hazard,” said Val, a Black South Side native who has lived in Chicago her entire life.

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A candy house is a business run by a homeowner who sells candy and snacks. But they were also a source of fun for children and income for women in areas of Chicago the media consistently portrays as violent, unhealthy, and poor, and that have suffered due to policies that hurt Black homeownership, exacerbate segregation, and affect food quality.

According to the Racial Justice Project, Black people have access to half as many grocery stores as whites. Many big grocery store chains avoid low-income spaces altogether.

But we had candy houses. They were symbolic to South Siders.

There are no longer as many as there used to be, though. Growing up, there was a candy house across from my elementary school, then called Myra Bradwell, on S. Burnham Ave. Whenever I had the money, my favorite things to purchase were sour candy balls, specifically the blue ones, and dill pickles. The store wasn’t always open, but when it was, there were always children purchasing candy and running to school. It’s gone now.

In 2006, while I was in high school, another candy house existed for about four months in the summer. I used my money from an after-school job and bought tons of candy and chips to eat each day. But that candy house also closed. I knocked on the door, and the woman simply said that she was no longer selling candy, and that was the end of that.

Traditionally, people on the South Side of Chicago purchased their candy from one wholesaler: L&P Foods, located on 7047 S. State St. And despite median Black household income in the ‘90s being just $21,420, money never seemed like a problem when children and candy were involved.  Depending on the candy house, a child could receive candy on credit, an adult would purchase candy for neighborhood children, or other children would purchase candy for their friends.

This was the case with Etholia, 33, a former Auburn Gresham resident, who with $10 in her pocket shared her wealth with other children. “It had to be third grade and I told everybody that they could get something, all my little friends. We spent that money up and I almost got in trouble. When I came home, they asked, ‘Where’s your [money]?’ I was like ‘Oh, I spent it at the candy store,’” she said.

When children and adults purchased candy for other children it was a way to look out for each other. Doing so built a community of trust and brought people together, because the same people buying candy were also looking out to make sure you didn’t get into trouble, that you made it to school, and that you felt safe. Purchasing candy for children was more than a kind act. It was built on a foundation of Black traditions of acceptance and care.

And the houses were about more than just community building. Economically, they were important to Black ownership, and Black women were the center of the business.

“As far as I knew [it was] women. I never knew any men running it. Also, their older kids too,” Val said. “It was clear that many of those women were much older, and they didn’t have the sort of income that we have now, so candy houses were a way for them to get extra money.” In Chicago in 2016, only 2 percent of businesses were Black-owned despite Black people being 17 percent of the population.

Not only did these businesses provide extra income for necessities, they provided women money without strings attached.

“[My grandmother] loves money. I admired the hustle in her and that was her way to make extra income, because my grandmother was a [stay at home mom]… so she never really had income of her own,” La’Shon, a fourth generation South Side native, said.

The young relatives of these women also received a benefit, because children of candy house owners received automatic “cool” points from their peers.

“It gave me some type of extra street cred because my house was the candy house. If your house was the candy house, it put you on another level because your house was the house,” La’Shon said.

There is no single reason why candy houses are no longer as widespread. But among them are candy house owners growing older and retiring, safety concerns in Chicago’s enclaves due to the small population of violent offenders, and the ease of internet shopping.

“We have different type of community now. A lot of people who were not a part of the community infiltrated the community and made [corner stores] that really were the antithesis to those candy stores,” Val said. “[Illinois] started cracking down on people having businesses in their home, so people would actually get in trouble for it.”

“I think now everybody doesn’t live by the code, which is ‘don’t snitch when it comes to that.’ People are scared of getting shut down,” Etholia said.

The rise of internet commerce has also played a role in making candy houses a thing of the past. “The internet,” La’Shon said. “It’s definitely the major reason. I couldn’t tell you where a candy house is today… and I can go on the internet and buy chews, Frooties, and all those unique candies that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I can go on the internet and buy it now.”

With so many changes in communities and technology, these Black-owned businesses may never see their former glory. However, what will never change was that they built community and long-lasting memories that bonded communities together.

“Just knowing that we grew up in a time where you had a community, you had people that you could go to, you had people you could talk to, you had places where you could get fresh air and run around and be silly and be a kid,” Val said. “And I don’t necessarily think that a lot of times we think about Black children being children and that was the moment we were not held to this inhumane standard. It makes me think how wonderful it was to at least have some form of childhood and think about happy experiences.”

In the next couple of years, this stretch of northeastern Washington, D.C., will transform from a hole in the ground next to a church and down the road from a McDonald’s and a Sav-A-Lot into an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, some luxury apartment buildings, and, rumor has it, a grocery store.

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And because the area has been designated an Opportunity Zone, investors will be able to reap hefty tax benefits for the money they put into these projects — which shows exactly how the Opportunity Zone program, created by the 2017 Trump tax cut law, has gone awry.

Opportunity Zones are intended to spur investment in low-income communities that aren’t traditionally targets for businessfolk or developers. In exchange for putting their money into areas usually starved of capital and leaving it there for a certain amount of time, investors will pay lower tax rates than they would otherwise. Leave an investment in an Opportunity Zone for 10 years, and the capital gains earned will be tax-free; returns to investors could be increased by up to 70 percent thanks to the program, according to one estimate.

More than 41,000 Census tracts nationwide were eligible to be designated as Opportunity Zones, and investors are already pushing for the upcoming 2020 Census to expand those areas.

On the surface, Washington D.C.’s Edgewood is a perfect fit. The poverty rate in the neighborhood is nearly 30 percent, and the median income is just $28,000, according to Census Bureau data, in a city where the median income is above $82,000.

But there are a couple of big problems. First, the developments that will receive tax benefits because of the Opportunity Zone were well underway before the bill creating Opportunity Zones even existed, thanks in part to a $24 million subsidy from the city itself. The lead development company, MRP, freely acknowledges that its project would have gone ahead without tax incentives.

“We were well underway, almost finalized with our development plans and our program and mix [before the Opportunity Zone designation],” John Begert, a vice-president at MRP, said at the project’s groundbreaking in July, according to WAMU. “We were able to take advantage of it, but it wasn’t an original thesis of the business plan and of the development.”

This is a problem endemic to both Opportunity Zones specifically and corporate tax incentives more broadly: They end up subsidizing companies for investments those companies would have made anyway. According to one study, up to 75 percent of tax incentives given to companies in order to locate somewhere specific actually had no bearing on that company’s decision.

All across D.C. the sort of development occurring in Edgewood has occurred without anything like an Opportunity Zone to incentivize it. A similar debate took place around the building of D.C.’s publicly-funded baseball stadium: Proponents like to point to the surrounding economic development as proof that the $750 million Nats Park was a good investment, but don’t really grapple with the fact that other neighborhoods across the breadth of D.C. developed in exactly the same way without a taxpayer-funded sports complex.

But there’s also another question worth asking: Even if the Opportunity Zone were driving actual investment in the neighborhood, would that investment help the people at whom it’s ostensibly aimed? Like much of D.C., Edgewood is gentrifying rapidly; it’s a historically black neighborhood with more and more white people (myself included) moving in and driving up real estate prices, as it’s one of the few pockets of the city where there is any chance of a young professional being able to purchase a house somewhat near the Metro system. For white households in the neighborhood, the poverty rate is 2 percent; for black households, it’s 31 percent, according to the Census.

Rent and home prices are inevitably on their way up; there are currently two homes within the Opportunity Zone that are on the market for around $950,000, per Redfin. This will all hurt current residents who can’t afford higher living expenses.

Those same residents threatened with displacement likely won’t be able to take advantage of the new housing being built either, because D.C.’s average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,550, and many so-called luxury buildings charge much more. Future jobs at the movie theater or other retailers likely won’t pay enough to cover that amount, and just 116 of a total 1,450 units in the Bryant Street development will be designated as affordable housing under the city’s Inclusionary Zoning program, which allows for units to be set aside for families making 50, 60, or 80 percent of the area’s median income.

The new development is meant to entice new people, not aid the ones already there.

Small businesses are under pressure due to the increasing property costs. Our local dry cleaner recently closed after the owners’ landlord refused to renew their lease. It will be replaced by a condo building. In order to make way for the new development, a Big Lots store, a couple of fast food joints, an H&R Block, and a kind of strange drum shop were also all forced to close.

There are no requirements that investors even track whether members of the community are benefiting from the money and amenities Opportunity Zones bring in. D.C. received a grant from a private foundation that will enable it to do at least some data collection, but the zone is already here and the grant was just announced this week. So, the cart is very much before the horse.

As city councilmember Brianne Nadeau wrote last year, “Unfortunately, the design of the program has some serious flaws, and will likely accelerate the patterns of displacement caused by runaway capital that we’ve already seen for decades, but on a federally-subsidized scale.” Indeed, the developer who receives a tax break that had nothing to do with the decision to invest in Edgewood undeniably benefits from the Opportunity Zone. But after that, it’s unclear who else comes out as a winner. There will almost inevitably be displacement, and nothing is being done to help the folks affected by it, particularly those who aren’t homeowners.

My neighborhood certainly isn’t the only one in D.C. where projects that were already planned, surrounded by blocks that were gentrifying all on their own, received Opportunity Zone designations. Nor is this a situation unique to the capital city. But it’s a particularly egregious example of how the rhetoric around a program meant to help economically disadvantaged communities doesn’t come close to matching the reality.

To sum it up, that my neighborhood is an Opportunity Zone is patently absurd.

I traded in my MetroCard for a CTA pass and moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. There was a creative black community, my $750 rent was affordable, and I still had enough money to get bottom-shelf whiskey if I went out. A new job opportunity took me from the beauty of the Southside to an $800 gem in Humboldt Park.

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Things were going decently until the neighborhood — filled with “2 Flats,” an affordable Chicago housing staple — began to change. Moving trucks were constantly present, and I began to see a lot more white faces. A 2018 study from the Institute of Housing Studies at DePaul University states that due to gentrification, 2 Flats in neighborhoods like mine — which often house multiple generations — were being purchased and turned into single family homes, pushing out lower-income residents.

My building was purchased by a management company who slapped on a coat of fresh paint, put one washer/dryer set in the basement ($4 per load), and then slid a note under my door telling me they were raising my rent. Within three years, the rent went from $800 to $1,200. In August of 2017 I got another notice: the rent was going up to $1,475.

A single-person household in Chicago earning under $36,000 yearly is considered to be very low income — that was me. Factoring in transportation, bills, student loans, helping family, food and more, there was no way I could survive in this or many other Chicago neighborhoods. Survival included entertainment, such as seeing a film or treating myself to my favorite lunch spot, even though the world chastises poor people for trying to get moments of joy in our everyday lives.

I needed a place to live and fast. I had to stay in Chicago; I built a life here with relationships and a budding career. I couldn’t afford to start over. I scoured the internet and tucked away in the news tab of Google was an article about an initiative that I had never heard of. The Affordable Requirements Ordinance, as it’s called, requires developers to dedicate 10 percent of their units to affordable housing or pay into a low-income housing fund; most developments, unsurprisingly, opt to pay out. A new twist to the ordinance was being tested in the areas of Logan Square, Avondale, and West Town (The Hipster Triangle), along with some Near North/West areas. It required developers to commit 15 percent of new residential buildings to affordable rentals or build affordable housing within two miles of the development.

This sounded like my key to staying in Chicago, but getting that affordable housing would prove to be a difficult and time-consuming task. There was no list of participating properties, no one answered at the phone number I found, and the only contact email was for buyers of low-income units. I walked around the city and collected numbers from the temporary signage of 18 developing properties. With every phone call, my inquiries were met with exasperation, confusion, or false promises of a returned phone call.

After a few weeks, one building set me up with an interview to obtain an application. A leasing agent asked about my educational background, my work experience, and if I was in programs like LINK and Medicaid. I was being vetted to make sure I was the “proper” low-income resident. They didn’t want to make their wealthy future residents uncomfortable. They wanted someone who could not be clocked as poor on top of being black when they saw me checking my mail. After more interviews and massive amounts of paperwork that included a copy of my degree and character letters from my managers, I was offered a studio. I had played their game and three weeks later I moved in.

It’s not just the city that has a vendetta against its non-wealthy residents; it’s the surrounding suburbs as well. The 85 percent lily white and wealthy suburb of Tinley Park, for example, recently reached a settlement with the Department of Justice and Department of Housing and Urban Development after an affordable housing development that would have brought black and brown faces failed to get approval after being opposed by residents. This historically racist suburb is paying out over $2 million in damages. This didn’t happen on some very special episode of a 1960’s sitcom. This happened in real life in a place that is 45 minutes outside of Chicago.

Developers are cashing in when they pay into the aforementioned low-income housing fund instead of offering an affordable unit. They get about half of that $225,000 fee back in tax credits and that’s just one of the incentives the city offers; more than $4 million has gone missing from the fund. Chicago has to stop rewarding developers for opting out of helping the poor. These buildings need to increase the amount of units available to low-income people and be required to offer them, no buying your way out. They should then be required to help fund housing in forgotten communities, helping them to rebuild and thrive.

This Affordable Requirements Ordinance Pilot Project is one way to address housing affordability and segregation, but communication and access are key to making it work. A visit to the city’s website or an appointment at the local Department of Human Services should have residents well on their way to finding housing that they can afford and be proud to call home. Residents shouldn’t have to become a detective at the poorly proposed West Side police and fire academy to find proper housing.

This displacement has resulted in significant demographic shifts across the D.C. area. Until recently, black families comprised a majority of the city’s residents—about 60 percent in 2000. But as of 2014, only 49 percent of Washingtonians are black. Black families who have been displaced from the city due to its high cost of living have been replaced by an influx of mostly white newcomers, along with a growing Latino population.

Gentrification in our cities isn’t new, nor are the debates that surround it. But what is less discussed is how gentrification weakens displaced families’ access to social services that are critical to achieving social mobility. In D.C., local organizations and advocates that work to bring food access to low-income families have watched the number of families they serve dwindle.

One such organization is Martha’s Table, a nonprofit that has been part of the fabric of D.C.’s 14^th Street Corridor for over 35 years. Martha’s Table provides everything from early childhood education and after-school programming to youth employment and service learning opportunities. It is perhaps best known for its Healthy Eating Initiative, which coordinates mobile food trucks and farmers markets, reaching some 20,000 residents a year.

But its holistic efforts to ensure that services are meeting the needs of the surrounding community have been compromised by a troubling trend: long-time residents and Martha’s Table beneficiaries are being priced out of the neighborhood. New residential and commercial developments in the historically black neighborhood have attracted a flood of white, affluent newcomers. Due to the lack of affordable housing in D.C., low-income residents are pushed to the periphery of the city and surrounding suburbs, which has undermined the ability of city-based organizations like Martha’s Table to serve them. As Director of Stakeholder Engagement Ryan Palmer says: “35 years ago, this was the epicenter of all of the things that we are trying to address. Now people are taking two to three buses to get here.” In order to stay true to its mission of working in the communities it serves, Martha’s Table is reducing services in its current location and moving its headquarters east of the Anacostia River to Wards 7 and 8 by 2018.

Even when residents don’t leave the neighborhood, they now have to travel far and wide for basic necessities. Kim Williams is a mother of three children who have benefitted from Martha’s Table programming for four years. She has lived in the 14^th Street neighborhood for over 35 years and has seen how its changes have shaped her family’s access to healthy, affordable food. “I can’t afford to grocery shop in the area, so I physically live in the neighborhood but I leave to shop for food. The stores in the neighborhood are for new people coming [here]—not for the families who have been here for generations.”

Williams went onto discuss the tradeoffs she is forced to make to ensure she has food for her family. “It’s more cost-effective for me to buy meals from McDonald’s than to spend money on healthy food. And if I do buy healthy food, something else suffers—I won’t be able to pay my bills or something else.”

In an effort to bring a comprehensive set of services into a single location, Martha’s Table is now engaging residents of Wards 7 and 8 in order to shape what will be provided at their new headquarters. But these efforts may be undermined by looming residential and retail development projects that would add 900,000 square feet of commercial properties and 500  residences to Martin Luther King Avenue, a mere 8 percent of which will be affordable housing units. The development is already projected to shift the demographics of these neighborhoods. As Martha’s Table’s Palmer told TalkPoverty, “I would be lying if I said I haven’t wondered what changes will happen in the neighborhood between now and the two years when we get there.”

Across the city, D.C. Central Kitchen (DCCK) has also experienced the effects of gentrification. Through its Healthy Corners effort, DCCK sells nearly 88,000 healthy food products in corner stores throughout low-income wards. But increased rents in those areas have undermined efforts to increase participation in the program.  As Chief Development Officer of DCCK Alexander Moore states, corner store owners are “worried about getting a return on their investment and that makes it much tougher to integrate those stores into our program.” And, due to the decreased supply of affordable housing that arises from gentrification, many store owners simply cannot afford to live in the community where their store is located—which makes them less invested in building the community relationships necessary for marketing the healthy produce and increasing food access for low-income residents. The end result? Low-income residents are unable to access fresh, affordable produce at the local corner stores, while affluent newcomers have access to multiple full-service grocery stores within walking distance of their homes.

The effects of gentrification have also spilled over into the organization’s employment programs. DCCK offers a 14-week Culinary Job Training Program to more than 100 residents in order to prepare them for careers in the food service industry. This initiative has a hiring rate of over 90 percent for graduates. But, due to displacement, there is a growing demand for job training from Maryland residents who once lived in the District. It’s not unheard of for DCCK to provide job training to a parent living in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, while their child resides at a family member’s apartment in the District so they have access to D.C. public schools.

A key way to meet the needs of long-time neighborhood residents—rather than simply shifting them elsewhere—is by investing in more equitable development strategies that ensure the engagement of these residents in the planning, implementation and evaluation of development projects. Currently, there is little opportunity for residents to actively participate in discussions about changes in their neighborhoods. In a recent interview for Empower D.C., Linda Brown, a public housing resident, stated, “The main thing is that residents aren’t presented with the facts and so they can’t make sound decisions or have any input if they’re not presented with the facts.” Brown said that residents are often asked for input only once development processes have begun to take place, at which point they wield very little power or influence.

One hope for ensuring that long-time residents are able to reap the benefits of food-access initiatives is D.C.’s inaugural Food Policy Council. The Council will work to promote food access, sustainability, and a local food economy in which residents, local schools, hospitals and other organizations buy locally-grown food. Advocates like DCCK’s Moore see this development as positive. He is hopeful the Council can provide a “forum for diverse insights for what we need to do with our food system” by “investing purposefully in equity and ensuring all community voices are at the table.”

Organizations like Martha’s Table and D.C. Central Kitchen have set a good example for addressing inequities that are compounded by gentrification, such as hunger and food insecurity.  The Food Policy Council has the potential to expand upon these efforts by making a more sustainable local food economy in the city. But unless we engage the very communities that these programs intend to support, these initiatives will serve a shrinking population—and not because low-income residents have achieved social mobility, but because they have been priced out.