Those 'Opportunity Zone' tax breaks actually worked. They didn't just move projects around; they got 400,000 new homes built from scratch.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
The Impact of Opportunity Zones on Housing Supply ⋆
SSRN · 6473717
The Takeaway
Critics usually argue that place-based tax incentives just encourage developers to move a building one block over to get a tax break. This data shows the policy actually generated a massive net increase in residential addresses in low-income tracts that would not have existed otherwise.
From the abstract
U.S. housing supply remains severely constrained. We estimate the causal effect of Opportunity Zone (OZ) designation on the stock of active and vacant residential addresses using HUD’s aggregated USPS Address Vacancies data and modern difference-in-differences designs. OZ designation produced a large, sustained supply increase in designated low-income tracts, with an estimated effect of over 416,000 additional active/vacant addresses through 2025Q1, averaging 47.5 addresses per treated tract. Ef