I had the pleasure to attend a redevelopment forum on Wednesday that had quite a bit of workshops on various topics. Some of these topics included how to finance your redevelopment project, others talked about the myriad programs of local, state, and federal tax credits intended to stimulate growth, and some were just sessions on how to best design your new development.
One of the topics that I found most interesting was supposed to be about using New Jersey State Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credits to stimulate economic growth in your city or town. I say that this was the most interesting not because of the subject matter (which I’ve heard umpteen times before), but because of the discussion that came out of the workshop. You see, you can’t qualify for these tax credits unless your school district is an Abbott district (in need, according to the NJ Department of Education, of excess money just to operate at an effective level). There are a few more criterion for qualifying for these tax credits, but this is the one that brought about the comment from a woman out of Montclair, NJ.
She was part of their redevelopment committee (anyone who knows Montclair knows that they have some areas that could use some subsidized redevelopment projects!). The woman was a bit aggravated that her town, even though they are in dire need, didn’t qualify for the program. Someone in the back of the room said something like, “I bet the credits will find their way to Camden and Newark, though!”
And this got me thinking…
Many of these tax credit programs are written specifically to help these “underserved” neighborhoods bring themselves back to life. This is, indeed, a commendable cause – in fact I work for a nonprofit organization that engages in funding many of these redevelopment projects – so I’m well-versed in this “stuff.” Now, in my position, I have yet to see a major investment by private, nonprofit, or government sources in what we can term “non-underserved” areas. You may call these places the suburbs or the “nice part of town” or whatever. The fact is that the lion’s share of government and private programs are designed for and only active in low-income, underserved areas of the state.
Which brings me to my question – when is an area NOT underserved? What is that threshold? When do we, as a state and (more importantly) as socially-minded human beings say, “Wait a minute! We put $X00 million in investments, tax credits, business financing, etc. into this ‘underserved area’ over the past 10 years and there’s still a ton of problems. Oh, and now because we’ve neglected the suburbs for so long we have major crime waves, drug dealers, and gang growth in the ‘good part of town’ – what do we do?”
When is that question asked? When does someone say that when you invest hundreds of millions of dollars in one specific city over the course of a decade that this city is no longer underserved? Do we not say this now because the city is still under-PERFORMING? Isn’t there a difference between service and performance? Is it fair to continue to pour buckets of money into an area that has received many of these buckets and continues to fail year after year, generation after generation – while we have major social problems running roughshod over the suburbs and “less underserved” areas of the state?
THESE are the questions that sprung out of that redevelopment forum. But, sadly, these are the questions that no one in this state will ask because they don’t want to be branded as a “bad” person. Imagine that – being branded a bad person for asking good questions…
