HUD Secretary Turner visits opportunity zones enabled by tax reform

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner visited Opportunity Zone sites in Philadelphia on Thursday, touting the program’s impact on economic growth in those areas.

Created via the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, President Donald Trump’s signature tax-reform legislation, the zones confer preferential capital-gains tax treatment on economically struggling locales to spur job creation and livability. Philadelphia has 82 such areas covering nineteen percent of its population. Median household income therein ranges from around $13,000 to $91,000. 

Before leading HUD, Turner previously headed a White House commission spearheading Opportunity Zones and served in the Texas State Legislature. He once played professional football, starting with the Washington Redskins and most recently with the Denver Broncos, until 2003. 

The secretary credits the new zones with leveraging over $84 billion in private investment and supercharging job creation in previously undercapitalized neighborhoods.

“Opportunity Zones have been extremely impactful for our country,” he said. “We want people to go in by way of a Qualified Opportunity Fund [enabled by the program] to be able to invest in  neighborhoods and Census tracts across America — rural, tribal, and urban…. Home values inside of Opportunity Zones have risen [and] a million people have come off of the poverty rolls because of the Opportunity Zones Initiative.” 

At one of his stops last week, he toured The Battery, a $154 million Opportunity Zone development near where Port Richmond and Fishtown meet. First built as a Philadelphia Electric Company power station 104 years ago, the site nearing full reconstruction contains high-end residential, business, recreational and hotel space. 

Turner followed the visit with a stop at Quaker City Yacht Club, a six-acre Northeast Philadelphia spot that husband-and-wife property owners Dana and Ron Russikoff plan to transform into an entertainment complex and full-service marina. 

Assistant Deputy Secretary for Field Policy and Management Joe DeFelice, is administering HUD’s work in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. An attorney with a background in government, politics, and private development, he presently also oversees field offices throughout the nation beyond his own Region Three. 

“Joe has been with us from ‘go,’” Dana Russikoff gratefully recalled of his help with the marina project. 

At the yacht club, DeFelice took a few minutes to discuss Opportunity Zones and other HUD priorities. Having served at HUD during Trump’s first administration, Trump’s vision for the department as well as Turner’s rise to secretary inspired him to accept an offer to return.

“I worked with him a lot on Opportunity Zones and he and I traveled the region extensively; we were in West Virginia together, we were in D.C. together, Virginia together, all parts of Pennsylvania,” he said. “Once I knew he was coming back I was all in when they reached out to me.”

The regional administrator said the targeted tax relief provided through the Opportunity Zones begets the kind of economic vibrancy all residents of the Philadelphia area should want to see. He noted the Battery redevelopment has already generated copious construction, electrical, masonry, and other employment, not to mention various service jobs now starting up at the location. 

“Without Opportunity Zones, that place would not have existed, and those jobs would not have existed, and now those rents would not have existed, and those amenities would not have existed,” he said. “So, that right there took something that would not have been touched and was able to get it revitalized.” 

DeFelice’s other aims for the communities under his oversight include reducing homelessness and removing barriers to economic advancement. He observed that government spending to mitigate homelessness does not always correlate with decreasing the number of unhoused persons. 

A major goal for his agency under Turner’s leadership, he said, is lessening regulatory and zoning burdens that make it difficult for developers to provide affordable housing. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Housing Policy Initiative, Pennsylvania ranked 44th among all 50 states on the rate of housing built between 2017 and 2023. So great has the problem become, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker (D) has made construction of new housing units a top item on her administration’s agenda. 

“There’re a lot of barriers right now, regulation-wise,” DeFelice said. “I feel that if we can kind of limit government’s overbearingness on some of these private developers [we can] let them go to work [and] let them build the housing.”