Good-to-Know The latest data highlight how patchy the economic rebound has been in the U.S., where GDP growth is roaring nationally but many are left behind, including in minority neighborhoods from Los Angeles to Houston. The uneven recovery is a central reason why Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the economy still has a ways to go.

Late Covid Loans Hurt Recovery in Chicago’s Minority Neighborhoods

Bloomberg is tracking the economic recovery in minority communities across the country

By Shruti Singh, Andre Tartar and Christopher Cannon

Bloomberg.com

‎August‎ ‎10‎, ‎2021

NOTE: This insert from an earlier blog post

PRESS RELEASE from City of Mesa Newsroom MesaNow

Mesa launches Opportunity Zone Prospectus to spotlight notable investment opportunities across the City

December 12, 2018 at 3:12 pm

Today the City of Mesa announced the launch of the Mesa Opportunity Zone Investment Prospectus located at www.MesaAzOpportunityZones.com.

The Prospectus provides important information for potential investors regarding Mesa's Opportunity Zones:

Gateway Area

Falcon District

Main Street Corridor

Fiesta District

and the key geographic, demographic, infrastructure, and market advantages of Mesa's OZones.

Blogger Notes:

1. What is covered in the city's press release are four of 11 pre-designated areas that qualified for being low-income neglected, distressed neighbors or were contiguous to those census tracts here in Mesa. The Gateway Area and The Falcon District qualified for being contiguous to distressed census tracts. BY ZIPCODE THEY ARE HIGH-INCOME

2. Here in the image above right and a week after the monthly Economic Development Advisory Board meeting on 04 Oct 2018 are Mesa's EconDev Director Bill Jabjiniak flanked by other city officials and a consultant making a pitch for RDAs.

NOTE: This insert from an earlier blog post

Here are the pre-designated 11 Opportunity Zones in the City of Mesa. Note the areas to the left that are on the Valley Metro Light Rail lines. At the same time you can see that two large areas in Northeast Mesa and Southeast Mesa - in "The Outer Loops" where there's the most investments in just these two Opportunity Zones for commercial real estate [tech, industrial, and residential] and growth in job creation. Growth in the car-driven commuter culture expanding Suburbia reflects land-use planning.
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Here's a map of income distributions in the city of Mesa that needs some up-dating to fill-in the data gaps, especially in Southeast Mesa.
The color codes in the red-orange-yellow spectrum show higher-income areas concentrated in north and northeast Mesa. The darker-blue areas show lower-income areas.
[This is zip code data from the 2010 U.S. Census, It may or may not show the census tracts chosen as pre-designated Opportunity Zones, with the exceptions that qualify the NE and SE areas with higher-than-median-income levels but are nonetheless contiguous with distressed and neglected areas.
There are some areas and neighborhoods with a diverse mix.
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". . .This year billions of dollars in U.S. pandemic relief for small businesses finally made it to minority neighborhoods, reaching hair salons, daycares and restaurants in some of the poorest and most-segregated urban areas of the nation.

So far the infusion of Paycheck Protection Program funds has failed to translate into a meaningful economic recovery in many of these neighborhoods, data compiled by Bloomberg show. . .

NOTE: Windy City Wealth Gap

Chicago is roughly evenly split between White, Black and Hispanic people, but their economic situation is anything but equal.

Majority racial/ethnic group by zip code:

Median household income (2019)

◼ Black

◼ White

◼ Hispanic

40K

80K

120K

$160K

Rogers

Park

Chicago

Forest

Glen

Edgewater

Jefferson

Park

Lake View

Belmont

Cragin

Logan

Square

Lincoln

Park

Humboldt

Park

Austin

Garfield

Park

Near

West Side

Loop

Lake

Michigan

Lower

West Side

Brighton

Park

Bronzeville

New City

Garfield

Ridge

Englewood

West

Lawn

South

Shore

Grand

Crossing

Ashburn

Calumet

Heights

Roseland

Morgan

Park

West

Pullman

5 miles

Hegewisch

5 km

Note: Since ethnicity is separate from race, a zip code can be both majority-Hispanic as well as majority-Black or majority-White. In such cases, if a zip code’s Hispanic share of the population is more than 50% and greater than the Black and White population share, then it’s colored as majority-Hispanic.

Small businesses in majority-Black areas of the city ultimately got $355.4 million for every 100,000 residents, compared with $347.5 million in White communities and $163.3 million in Latino neighborhoods, according to the data.

But Black neighborhoods of metro Chicago received 72% of their PPP funds this year, in the final round of the $800 billion program, while majority-White parts of the city got 65% of their loans last year, government data show. That means that by the time significant PPP money arrived in some minority neighborhoods, they’d already lived through the months of shutdowns and the worst of the pandemic’s economic impact.

The delays in securing federal relief when local economies needed it most threaten to further widen the racial wealth gap in the third-largest U.S. city, where 30% of the population is Black and 29% is Latino.
Early PPP Rounds Favored Richer, Whiter Areas

Later PPP Loans Were Smaller Smallest Businesses Dominated Final PPP Round

Some Minority Areas Were Overlooked in 2020

Hispanic Areas Received the Least of All

By the time the Biden administration made changes to the final round of PPP loans in February 2021, focusing on minority-owned and smaller businesses, this area had already received almost all of its relief money—$149 million. Those changes proved more meaningful to non-White zip codes, many of which saw a bump in funds.

One long-running problem for smaller and minority-owned businesses is the lack of established relationships with banks that distributed the PPP forgivable loans. A similar lag in federal aid can be seen in U.S. metro areas including Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, data show.