Oregon is the latest state to join the nascent federal program, which is designed to stimulate investment in distressed areas.
Oregon has designated dozens of areas around the state as Opportunity Zones, where investors can receive federal tax breaks for funding real-estate projects or new businesses.
The Opportunity Zone program, created by the 2017 tax reform bill, aims to facilitate private investment in areas with high poverty rates. States could nominate a quarter of their eligible census tracts; in Oregon, that worked out to 86 of 342 qualifying low-income areas.
Thirty-one of the new zones are in the Portland area, including "some of Portland's highest-rent neighborhoods," according to reporter John Tierney. Downtown Portland, for example, has a poverty rate of 48 percent despite its high-value real estate. Gresham, Clackamas, and each of the state's nine federally-recognized tribes also received designations. View a map of Oregon's eligible and designated zones on KGW8.
Oregon is one of a handful of states to take up the program, and the potential impacts of the program are still being debated.
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