A FEW PROPOSALS aimed at boosting investment in low-income communities came buried in the sprawling Trump tax and spend bill, which on the whole has been scorned by Democrats for its assaults on social services funding like Medicaid and SNAP benefits.  

President Trump signed the almost 900-page bill into law on July 4, after Republican leadership wrestled the bill through the House and Senate on largely party-line votes. 

On The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon executive editor Michael Jonas and reporter Jennifer Smith discuss a few provisions of the tax package that are not straightforwardly reviled in Massachusetts – expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and making permanent the Opportunity Zones program. Smith recently wrote about the two provisions here and here.  

Both give tax breaks to developers who build projects aimed at low-income areas or populations, with the almost 40-year-old Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program set for its largest expansion in decades after years of bipartisan support. Affordable housing advocates and supply-side building boosters alike cheered the change, which they say could open the door to more than a million more homes aimed at low-income households in the next decade. 

The Opportunity Zones changes are more of a mixed bag, touted as a way to encourage investors to back projects in low-income census tracts by reducing their capital gains tax burden if they stay invested in those projects. Yet the limited data on the 2017 program found the zones that got new investment didn’t look all that different afterwards in measures like job creation or education attainment. Those areas had also already been on a slight upswing in the years before the program took effect.  

“There are two ways to read this,” Smith said. “The charitable read is that the zones are helping smooth the process for developers in areas that are getting better but aren’t still great investments. And the less charitable read is it’s giving these tax breaks for projects in areas that may have been more likely to attract them anyway while leaving distressed or rural or stagnated areas out.” 

While the two provisions in the sprawling domestic policy bill offer some hope to those on the bottom rungs of the economy, they do so through an approach Trump has long viewed favorably – tax breaks to well-off investors. When it comes to direct government spending to help those struggling to make ends meet, it’s been a very different story.  

Trump has proposed cuts to federal rental assistance programs like Section 8, which are sometimes crucial to low-income tenants being able to cover the rent in the affordable housing developments made possible through tax credits.

All of that, Matt Noyes, of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, told Smith for her recent story on the housing tax credits, adds up to policies that “are not rowing in the same direction.”  

During the episode, Smith and Jonas discuss Opportunity Zones (3:00), low-income housing (14:45), and the administration’s tax-cut-first philosophy (20:00).