The De-Gentrification of New Markets Tax Credits

Abstract

"I am concerned and I am frustrated because I don't know what the alternates are...It clearly isn't racist; its economics. The real question you have to ask yourself is: Is this good orbad?"-Norman Rice, former Mayor of Seattle, On gentrification in that cityUrban America is in a state of crisis. A huge pool of America's resources is increasingly disconnected from mainstream society. That pool is within the core of major cities and particularly includes African American and Hispanic male youth. By way of illustration, more than half of all core city African American men do not finish high school. The correlation between drop-out rates, unemployment, and incarceration is profound. As of 2004, 72% of African American dropouts who are in their 20's are unemployed, up from 65% in 2000.s Incarceration levels are at historic highs and increasing, where by their mid-30's, 6 in 10 of these high school drop outs have spent time in prison. That rate is four times higher than that of Black men in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Seventy-five percent of African American males incarcerated in Baltimore Maryland did not graduate from high school. The infant mortality rate among all African Americans is more than twice the national average, and is much worse among the poor in the core of urban America. After the Katrina floodwatershave receded, some see an opportunity to buy low and sell high. But themuted voices of the poor cry to keep what they had.' For them it was aKatrina moment. For the urban core poor across the nation, it has been aKatrina erosion over the decades from a series of unnatural disasters.