Opportunity Zones & Tax Reform In 2025, An OZ Pitch Day Panel

The future of Opportunity Zones hangs in the balance. With Trump as President and a Republican Congress, will the tax policy be extended and renewed in 2025?

This panel discussion was presented live at OZ Pitch Day on November 14, 2024, featuring Catherine Lyons of the Economic Innovation Group and Jill Homan of Javelin 19 Investments. Moderated by Jimmy Atkinson of OpportunityZones.com.

Episode Highlights

  • How a favorable political landscape could provide a pathway for Opportunity Zone legislation in 2025.
  • A breakdown of OZ 1.5 (extension) vs. OZ 2.0 (renewal).
  • The economic impact of Opportunity Zones since program inception in 2017, and their value as a place-based economic development tool.
  • How the next iteration of Opportunity Zones could address gaps in affordable housing, strengthen rural community support, and enhance small business accessibility to the tax incentive.
  • The urgency for quick action once President Trump is inaugurated, as the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act begin to expire after 2025.

Panelists: Jill Homan & Catherine Lyons

Featured On This Episode

About The Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityZones.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, The Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in the Opportunity Zones industry.

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Show Transcript

Jimmy: And we’re gonna begin our panel on Opportunity Zones and Tax Reform in 2025. I’m gonna be joined by a few panelists today. Catherine Lyons, from the Economic Innovation Group. Jill Homan, from Javelin 19 Investments. The stage is ours here for the next half hour or so. I know this has been one of the biggest questions that I have gotten, repeatedly, over the last several years, is, “Are OZs really going away in 2026? Are they going to be extended? What’s going on with legislation?” I get that question weekly, if not daily, from my different followers, via email, or on our YouTube channel, or here on our many OZ Pitch Day events that we’ve held over the years. So, in case you’ve been living under a rock, we had some major news last week. President Trump has been re-elected to a second presidential term.

And just yesterday, “The New York Times” called the House of Representatives officially for the Republican Party, and the Senate was called on election night for the Republicans. So, it’s a Republican sweep, which, you know, regardless of what your politics may be, it is, without a doubt, the most favorable outcome for the purposes of Opportunity Zones getting extended and renewed. President Trump’s been very vocally supportive of Opportunity Zones over the past seven years, really, since they were enacted as part of his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. So, I’m pleased to be joined on this panel today by Catherine Lyons of the Economic Innovation Group, Jill Homan of Javelin 19 Investments. Catherine, turning to you first. Just, hello, and welcome. Nice to see you here today.

Catherine: Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me, and it’s nice to be here.

Jimmy: Absolutely. And Jill, quick mic check on you. Great to see you here as well. Thanks for joining.

Jill: Great. Good to be with you, Jimmy. I’m always a big fan. So, you’ve been at day zero with the start of Opportunity Zones, and Catherine and her team are really doing awesome work on the Hill, and in advocacy, and ensuring an Opportunity Zone 2.0, so, appreciate the work they’re doing.

Jimmy: Absolutely. So, and we’re still waiting on, Shay Hawkins should be joining us shortly. He’s known to just kind of crash into these things a few minutes late sometimes, so that’s just fine. We’ll go ahead and get started without him. But Catherine, turning to you, I wanted to just get your take and analysis of the election outcome, and why the industry thinks that this is the most favorable outcome for Opportunity Zones going forward.

Catherine: Yeah, sure. So, even more broadly than Opportunity Zones, the 2025 has been a year that a lot of folks in the tax policy industry have been looking toward, because many of the provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was the tax reform bill that was passed at the end of 2017, that Opportunity Zones was included in, many of those provisions are expiring in 2025. And so, it was a topic on the campaign trail, and certainly has been top of mind for the tax-writing committees in Congress, that this year was going to be a pivotal one, no matter the outcome of the election, really, for dealing with the renewal, or extension, or just kind of relitigation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So, even though Opportunity Zones doesn’t expire, or that it’s, the end date for investment and deferral is 2026, because it’s part of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and there likely won’t be another tax vehicle or opportunity to sort of readdress this by 2026, it’s very much part of this conversation, and the “Super Bowl of Tax,” which is being referred to, as it’s being referred to on the Hill. And so, this was always going to be a pivotal year regardless, but certainly, with the outcome of the election, I think we have a clearer sense now on how this will be potentially addressed. And so, with a Republican sweep in both chambers of Congress and the presidency, they are more free to pursue a reconciliation bill to address Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and do it through that avenue, versus having to deal with a divided government, and a different process that that would require.

So, reconciliation essentially means that you can pass a bill on a simple majority, but there are some limitations with what can be included in a reconciliation bill, namely that everything has to be very much germane to the budget, and have a revenue kind of implication. And so, of course, the majority of the OZ policy certainly does. That’s how it was, and why it was passed in reconciliation the first time. But there are certain things like reporting requirements, for example, which is something we care very much about, and has deep bipartisan support, that isn’t exactly germane to the budget, and why those were taken out in the process the first time around. So, some interesting kind of dynamics here, but I think people are generally seeing a lot of opportunity and excitement around what’s the future of Opportunity Zones, given the outcome of the election, because there is a clear path forward, via this reconciliation tool, that I think leads to some interesting opportunities.

Jimmy: Yeah, great. Great explainer there. Thanks for going into detail on what budget reconciliation means, and its implications.

Catherine: It’s a very arcane process, so…

Jimmy: It is. But, and our audience should know, we’re not expecting you to know what the heck budget reconciliation is. I certainly didn’t have any idea what it was when I first started learning about Opportunity Zones. I’ve since kind of accidentally learned a little bit about it. Don’t know nearly as much as Catherine, I’m sure, but I know a little bit about it, enough to be dangerous. But this was the process under which Trump’s signature tax cuts policy, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was also passed. That larger bill, 186-page document, if you download the PDF from congress.gov, 6 pages of which are the Opportunity Zones provision. So, a little less than 3% of the total tax legislation deals with Opportunity Zones, at least by word count. So, within tax legislation and tax reform, the “Super Bowl of Tax,” as you mentioned a moment ago, Catherine, Opportunity Zones are part of it, but they’re a relatively minor part in the grand scheme of things, although they feel major to us and everybody in this room, on this Zoom call today. Jill, I wanna turn to you, and just, you know, I wanna talk about OZ 1.5, the extension, OZ 2.0, the renewal, timing, likelihood, how it may all unfold, in a few minutes here. But first, Jill, just from you, before we dive into the weeds too much, just give us your overall take on the outcome of the election, and what you’re hoping may transpire at a high level for Opportunity Zones and tax legislation more broadly in 2025, and maybe a bit about your role within the industry also.

Jill: So, I really started working in Opportunity Zones when it originally passed, back in first part of 2018. And so, I’ve been politically engaged, and also have a real estate investment background. So, I’ve been working in the real estate investment industry for 20 years. So, what I describe is functionally, I’m doing the same thing as I’ve always done, which is invest in emerging and growing communities. And now, these happen to be designated Opportunity Zones. And so, I’ve taken a very active and role in promoting what I think is great public policy. And so, produce a weekly newsletter, really talking about the stories of Opportunity Zones, which oftentimes get missed sometimes in the news articles. When things get political, people don’t learn about the day-to-day stories. And so, what I do is I’m a partner with Pinnacle Partners. We are a $100 million Opportunity Zone Fund, so, raised and deployed into four projects. I advise investors and family offices on allocating their money into Opportunity Zones, working with Pinnacle to raise a build-to-rent fund, with our partner at Trilogy Investments. And then, separately, have personally made some investments into Opportunity Zones as well. So, I joke, my family gets tired of me talking about Opportunity Zones. That’s why I say OZ sometime.

Anyway. So, as you mentioned, I did wanna comment. So, we had six pages of legislation. What I’d like to say is it spawned 544 pages of regulations. And so, I think what I would…how I think about this is we have a conversation about policy. So, what does Opportunity Zones 2.0 look like for policy? And I’m gonna kind of step through this just a little bit. But what I would suggest is this has been a phenomenal economic development, place-based economic development tool. And it has attracted $84 billion in equity investment into these communities, using the government’s own numbers, Joint Tax, Joint Committee on Tax. And so, when we think about how can we improve Opportunity Zones, and what are the opportunities for Opportunity Zones, what I would suggest is, you know, we think about perhaps areas that need to be addressed. And we’re having a national conversation on affordable housing. And I think maybe there’s opportunities to help OZs kind of fit neater, to help us work on affordable housing challenges. Same thing in rural communities. There was a, Catherine can speak to this, but there was a rural OZ bill that was introduced. But maybe there’s an opportunity to address that in targeting rural communities, and also small businesses. And so, the overwhelming majority of investment has taken place in real estate. And it’s really for, in my view, the pure fact that real estate, by definition, is place-based. This is a place-based economic development tool.

When you have a business that’s not real estate, you have tangible property moving all over. And it’s really, you know, it becomes challenging to try to make your business fit with this tool. And then, if you’re a small business, it becomes challenging, you know, paying these fantastic service providers, you know, their market rate, and in order to, you know, as a small business, trying to make it fit, trying to comply with the terms. And so it becomes a difficult tool for small businesses. And so I think there’s an opportunity to address these issues in a 2.0, in a way that’s, you know, accretive, and moving forward with a, you know, 2.0, to expand access on the locations, expand access on the type of people that can invest in OZs. And so, you know, what my view is, you know, let’s take something that’s a promising and an excellent policy, $84 billion in equity investments, and let’s see if we can make it fit in to these problem spots that we’ve addressed over the last five years.

And then, I think, beyond that, we have what I think are some technical areas that need to be fixed. And this is really, that this gets kind of down all the rabbit holes that, you know, Jimmy, you talk about all the letters to the IRS that folks, you know, tax attorneys and accountants write. But, you know, that has to do with all the 544 pages of regulations when you’re grafting partnership tax law in with OZs. And, you know, it starts with an OZ investment has a zero basis, and then it kind of goes from there. And so I think what we need to do is really make these technical fixes as well, and maybe that’s in the regulatory process. Maybe that is part legislatively. But, you know, there’s some technical things that need to be updated. And then what I would also suggest is we also are at a really interesting time as well for executive orders. And if you recall when OZs first passed, President Trump issued an executive order pertaining to Opportunity Zones, where he focused the federal government on how to, on really aligning all the agencies that have a place-based program to prioritize Opportunity Zones.

And so…and that made a lot of sense, because governors themselves said, “These are our highest priority areas of where we want investment.” And then the president said, “Okay, well, let me align these agencies to try to help spur the investment in these areas, with programs that are existing.” And so, I thought it was brilliant. And I think maybe there’s opportunities within the executive order process that can happen faster, so that we can take something that’s already existing, and, again, amplify it. And so, as it relates to an extension and a 2.0, you know, I’m not sure the mechanics of it. You know, I know Catherine has a lot of conversations of whether folks might just kind of jump to a 2.0 reform bill, rather than, you know, an incremental step on, you know, 1.5. Like, does Microsoft issue, like, a 1.5 software update, or do they really wanna go straight to, like, a 2.0 or 3.0? And so, I think, you know, Catherine maybe can speak to some of the mechanics of what folks are thinking about in tax reform.

Jimmy: I would love that. Yeah, I’ll just interject briefly here, just to clarify for anybody who’s not familiar with the lingo that we’re using. When we talk about an OZ 1.5, we’re talking about extension. And the current legislation that’s on the table, at least at this moment, in the current session of the House of Representatives, is the Opportunity Zones Transparency Extension and Improvement Act, which would do a lot of things, but one of the main things it would do is it would bump out that deferral date from 2026 to 2028. So, basically give the entire current program an extra two additional years of runway. That’s OZ 1.5, extension.

We also are talking about, right now, possible OZ legislation that would renew Opportunity Zones, and essentially allow for new designations of new census tracts, according to the 2020 map, as Opportunity Zones, and give the program another, a whole ‘nother program, essentially, a reformed, modernized Opportunity Zones, which would be, look very much the same as this current program, but with some modifications made to it. We mentioned an increased focus on rural and on affordable housing. And that could potentially run from, I don’t know, maybe 2027 through 2035. I’m just kind of throwing that date range out there. Maybe Catherine could push back on that. But Catherine, let me turn to you now. I want you to answer Jill’s question. Do we even need the 1.5, or should we just go straight to 2.0, or how do you view these two different ideas, and how should investors be viewing them as well? And by the way, if you have any questions for us, please do use the chat or the Q&A. We’ll save some time for questions here in a few minutes.

Catherine: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the OZs 1.5 and the OZTEIA, which is the sort of, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the acronym that we use for the improvement legislation that Jimmy was just mentioning, it definitely represents an important set of meaningful improvements to the policy, to this first iteration of the policy. And it has bipartisan support, which I think is important and notable. I think that still, if that is what gets done, that’s a big win. They would, it would definitely, in addition to extending the policy, it would establish reporting requirements. It would allow for feeder funds and fund-of-funds investments, which would very much help smaller rural communities. It would kind of clean up the map a little bit. So, it would do some important things.

But again, kind of, given the political environment right now, and the reconciliation bill that’s on the horizon, I think there is also a, there’s an opportunity to take some of those ideas and potentially apply them in a way to the next iteration of the policy, toward a 2.0, and really think a little bit more broadly here. I think the committee still has a lot to figure out. Obviously, it’s only been about a week since we had at least some official results. And as you mentioned at the top, the House was just officially called for the Republicans yesterday. So, there’s still a lot to be sorted through, in terms of what does a reconciliation package potentially look like? What is the scope of that? How will it score? I mean, that’s gonna be a really important aspect of all of this, for OZs, but much more broadly, for the entirety of this package coming together.

Jimmy: Nobody likes talking about how much this stuff is gonna cost …

Catherine: Yeah, exactly. But it’s a really critical question, and it takes some time to figure all of that out, and decide kind of where the lines should be drawn. So, there’s still a lot to figure out, but at the same time, a very much a sense of urgency. There’s been general desire, on the House side at least, to try to accomplish something on reconciliation in the first 100 days, or at least the first half of the year. I think that is a optimistic timeline. I think if you just look at past as precedent, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed at the end of the first year of President Trump’s first term. So, really just a few days before Christmas. So, I think that is at least an example of how this has all worked, and the timeline that this was on previously, for the last major tax reconciliation bill. So, we’ll see. I mean, no one has a crystal ball, but I think there’s a lot to be worked through, in terms of the scope and scale of what’s on the table. But I think that, to overuse the word a little bit, there’s a lot of opportunity to think a little bit more beyond some of the confines of the improvement bill. Though, again, I think that is very much an important package of reforms, and carrying that bipartisan support as well.

Jill: If I could just maybe contrast that, you know, Trump touts Opportunity Zones, and he touted it in 2020 as part of his platinum plan, and he touted its success this cycle. And so, I think it’s tremendously exciting, both from an investor standpoint, but I think also from the folks who are living in Opportunity Zones. And there’s a “Wall Street Journal” article that actually, and I think it was with your team’s work, Catherine, that really looked at, okay, who was the population that elected President Trump? And low-income and middle class formed a big base of who elected the president. And so, in some ways, this is, you know, the communities of Opportunity Zones elected Trump, and he also has an opportunity to serve this community with this expansion, or with this policy.

The other point I would also make, in terms of just scoring, it’s very convoluted when we talk about $84 billion in equity investment going to a community, but we’re talking about it being a cost, because that’s money the government didn’t spend, but that’s, like, government backwards math for you, is that you have unrealized capital gains, but that, again, government does this backwards math. And so that’s some of the gyrations that Catherine lives every day in trying to advocate for good economic policy when you’re dealing with this backwards government math, and how they score these.

And I think just one other, kind of going back to the point, I was at an America First Policy Institute event in Atlanta, and, again, saw firsthand having these conversations with folks that were small business owners, and who really wanted to use Opportunity Zones, but were just having trouble utilizing this tax incentive. And so I think that’s something that we should all have top of mind as we’re both solving the technical fixes, we’re thinking about an extension, but I think also what I keep in mind is the folks that don’t have the budget to hire the best-in-class accounting and law firms to make it work for them, how can we think about making it work for these folks as well? And I think if we can unlock that, I think that would be tremendously exciting. So, I’m very optimistic about what this all means. And folks like Catherine have a ton of work, because this is one policy, six pages of a big bill, and everything, kinda how it all fits, how it all scores, and, is what is happening real-time …

Jimmy: And Catherine’s group’s gonna be instrumental in what this OZ 2.0 might end up really looking like. And Catherine, I think EIG hasn’t quite yet officially published their recommended list, but I think that’s coming out in the next few weeks here, so I’d love to be able to share that with my group when that’s available. In the meantime, though, I do have a couple of resources that I just linked to in the chat. I’ve linked to my 2025 OZ Legislation Report, free PDF download, nothing to sign up for. It’s just straight to the PDF right there. And then I also just provided a link to that “Wall Street Journal” article that Jill just referenced in her earlier remarks. Catherine, I don’t know if you had something that you wanted to say, otherwise I wanted to move into the questions in a moment here.

Catherine: Yeah, no, I think just in general, is we’re looking at what’s next for OZs, and I think, Jill, you made some really good points about what we’re all hoping, kind of, the next iteration of the policy, whatever form that takes, will accomplish. And I think the general principle here is we’re trying to get it as close to what Congress always intended for this, and really to sort of manifest that. And a lot of that includes more investment in operating businesses, for example. I mean, that was always an intent of the champions, remains an intent of the champions, but has been hard to accomplish because of the regulations and various other things. Those are the types of things that I think there’s some real opportunity here to think about how we can facilitate more of those types of investments, and really get toward the realization of what Congress always hoped for with this. I think we are off to an incredible start, and we’ve already seen just a real amazing level of investment across geographies, and in terms of the sheer dollars invested, but we know that there’s a lot more potential. And so, that’s, I think, where we can be thinking in the year ahead.

Jimmy: Very good. Well, we’ve got just about five more minutes before our next presentation, so I did wanna spend some time seeing if we can address some of the questions in the chat and in the Q&A section here. John actually asked two great questions. Let me ask this question of his first. “What is the timing of any of this tax reform? Are we talking about first 100 days? Are we talking about end of next year?” And then, I’ll add in a second part to his question. He didn’t ask this, but I’m curious. What is the likelihood of major tax legislation actually being enacted before the end of next year? So, timing and likelihood. Catherine, what do you say?

Catherine: Yeah. So, I touched on this a little bit earlier. I mean, I think there’s the desire, on the House side, at least, to have something out in the first 100 days. But I think, again, if you just look at what happened in 2017, the House acted first in the first six months or so of that year, but then the reconciliation bill was not passed until the end of the year. That’s probably more likely, in terms of a timing. But again, very much just prognosticating here. But I think these are major, it’s a major piece of legislation. It takes a lot of staff work and a lot of time to work through the process, even a process that’s more expedited, like reconciliation. And so, I would say probably more of an end of the year. I mean, that’s also aligned with the timing of when a lot of these provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire, which is the end of 2025. So, that is a very motivating factor, though, and I think that that will hopefully propel momentum for something happening, again, scope and scale TBD, but something happening by the end of next year, if I had to make an educated guess.

Jimmy: And what about likelihood percentage chance? Just to put you on the spot.

Catherine: I think it’s a pretty high percentage chance, just given where we’re at with the Republican sweep. And again, with these expiring provisions at the end of next year, I think it’s a pretty high probability. So…

Jill: So, Catherine, would that be a 63.5% chance or a 63.7% chance?

Catherine: Those few percentage points make a difference, you know?

Jimmy: Yeah, Jill, what do you say?

Jill: Well, what I would suggest is, I think we’re at, and quite honestly, in my view, we’re at an inflection point with Opportunity Zones at this election. And I think if Trump was not elected, I think any Opportunity Zones reforms would have worked to make it look more like a government program. So, it would have been any reforms would have required a lot of, like, horse trading, a lot of, like, “Hey, we don’t want high end housing. There has to be an affordable housing…” I mean, like, it would have been sliced and diced. And I think it would have been very, very challenging if we didn’t have this outcome. And what I would say is, with the outcome we have, it’s, with President Trump, Republican control of the House and Senate, it’s a mandate for his administration. And that has been with his economic agenda. And a key part of that, when he touts Opportunity Zones, you know, has to be Opportunity Zones. I mean, he talks about it. And so, when you read the speeches and you look at how the vote outcome occurred, then, to me, it makes me more optimistic about the opportunity for this to happen in the very near term. My concern is, on the investment side, is the closer we get into 2025, the more challenging it’s gonna be for the funds. Because if you’re a institutional fund, and you’re raising outside capital, you really need to have line of sight into your investors, your ability to raise that money, and also your ability to deploy those funds. And so, the closer you get into the end of ’25, I just think it’s just gonna be challenging for institutions to fully go out and say, “We’re going to be raising an Opportunity Zone fund.”

And so, with that, I see, if nothing happens in ’25, I see the opportunity, the funds, in ’26, will really be what you call captive funds, or individual investors maybe doing their own deals. And I would see as you get more into ’25, fewer and fewer and fewer funds using this tax incentive, because of that challenge. And so, my concern with it is the longer we wait, it’s almost like, even if you pass it, then you gotta kinda turn the ship around. And now these funds need to come back into the market. And it’s just, it’s not something to start a fund. It takes many months of just work and compliance. And this is on the institutional side. And even on the non-institutional side, even if, in the best case scenario, and more small businesses are getting involved, there’s a significant component, technical assistance, and really helping folks kind of ramp back up. And as we know, when we went from it being passed in the end of ’27 until, it was, you know, the final regs at the end of 2019, and then we had the pandemic, but that was two years. And so, what I, my hope is that we can do something in the near term, because the longer it kind of goes into ’25, and heading into ’26, there’s, I think, some momentum challenges with it getting going again. And even if there’s a fantastic OZ 2.0, we still would be going through that regulatory period, and how does that kind of fit in with the current timing that we have? So, those are my… You know, I’m very optimistic, but I sure hope something happens sooner rather than later, because of these challenges that we have.

Jimmy: And hopefully, it’s a smoother process the second time around, since we’ve all done this before. We just have one, maybe two more minutes left. I did wanna get to one or two more questions here, but we’ll have to have very brief answers. Sal, by the way, chimes in and says, “Catherine, thanks for your tireless work at EIG. You are an OZ OG,” he says. Thanks, Sal. And he also asks, “How can we help? What should we be pushing our congressional reps for 1.5 or a full redo on an OZ bill?” Very briefly, anything we can do?

Catherine: Yeah. I mean, I think the answer to this, I think really remains the same over the years that I have asked this. It’s really to continue the education of what you all are doing with Opportunity Zones, specifically in the districts, and sharing that with your members of Congress, where you’re active, especially. There’s a lot of education that still needs to be accomplished. Any new Congress, there’s a lot of new members coming in, there’s a lot of new staff coming in, and turnover is just a natural occurrence. But also, the percentage of people who are there for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, just seven years ago, I think it was, or eight years ago, is shockingly low. And so there is a lot of education that is required in the tax space, on OZs in particular, and it’s always very, very helpful for them to hear directly from practitioners, especially those active in their districts, or their states, on what they’re doing, and how this is having an impact on communities, and what they would really need to see more of. And I think in this case, I think Jill, you make a really good point. Certainty, and clarity, those are all things that would be very helpful as we’re looking to the next year.

Jimmy: And then, last question. I’ll let Jill take this one, from John here. “Is there a risk making an OZ investment this year, in 2024? Should I wait until 2025 to get more clarity on the program, or will the provisions be retroactive to prior investments?” Some concern about, well, should I just wait, or should I go in now? What does it matter?

Jill: I would, again, preface it with all, it needs to be a good investment, properly structured, like, all the caveats, but I would absolutely make the investment now, because it’s, you know, what are your…like, your knowns, you know what Opportunity Zones looks like now. You know, if you have an investment now, if you have a capital gain now, you know, I would make this investment now. There’s, to me, there’s, you know, no reason to wait. And I would just wish John much success, so that he can generate another capital gain, and, you know, hopefully participate with a 2.0. And then I would just underscore Catherine’s point, like, highlight it, underscore. Contact your elected officials, contact your US Senator, your congressmen. Tell them that you’re doing an Opportunity Zone project, either you’re doing it or you made an investment, and share the size of the project, where it is, how many jobs you created, like, very, very specific with what you did, and let them know, happy to have you visit. But it’s as simple as that. Like, this is what I’ve done, and it’s great. Like, what I did, and it’s great. Need you to support this. And again, it’s just the more that, it’s just like with anything, the more that we can paint a picture and tell the story, just like what I talked about with the newsletter, telling the story of the actual projects that happened on the ground really helps folks like Catherine be able to, you know, make these connections, that this isn’t just a, you know, tax incentive, that it’s, you know, it’s actually helping, you know, bring real money to these communities, and create these jobs, such as, you know, such-and-such project.

Jimmy: It’s a huge community development tool, for sure. We are over time and out of time, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to everybody’s questions, but I’ll try to address them in the chat over the next few minutes. I did hear from Shay Hawkins. He got tied up with Representative Mike Kelly’s staff today. Mike Kelly, one of the biggest proponents of Opportunity Zones. Shay’s doing great work behind the scenes for Opportunity Zones. He wishes he could have made this panel, and he’s sorry that he didn’t make it, but thank you, Shay, for being out there doing some work for us on Capitol Hill. And maybe he’s in Pennsylvania. I’m not sure. But anyways, Catherine Lyons, EIG, Jill Homan, Javelin 19 Investments. Ladies, thank you so much for being here today with me. Really appreciate your time and your insights.

Catherine: Thanks for having me.

Jill: Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, Catherine.