Third-year Fordham Law Student Charlie Metzger, associate editor of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, co-authored an article for Fortune that examines the Opportunity Zones initiative and its potential to positively impact disenfranchised neighborhoods.
Just a few miles down the road from the apartment complex where Louisville police shot Breonna Taylor, a Black-owned business is transforming the way property owners file insurance claims for weather damage. WeatherCheck, cofounded by Y Combinator graduates Demetrius Gray and Jermaine Watkins, identifies weather-related property damage so that homeowners can file claims with their insurers. To date, the firm has 4 million rooftops in its customer base and it employs 11 people, double last year’s headcount. This success happened because of investments spurred by a federal program called the Opportunity Zone (OZ) initiative.
The OZ initiative made WeatherCheck’s growth possible. However, most minority-owned businesses aren’t as fortunate: A study conducted by PitchBook and All Raise found that just 1.9% of startups in Silicon Valley were founded by all-women teams, and a Harvard Business Review article by entrepreneur James Norman reports that less than 1% of all venture-funded teams are all Black.
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Impact-focused OZ investment is not restricted to urban communities. Colorado-based Four Points Funding invests largely in projects in the state’s rural corridors, which are often left out of the national conversation about economic development and equity. Among these investments is a warehouse food hall in Craig, Colo. The building will be anchored by a coffee shop called Inclusion Coffee, whose mission includes providing job training and employment for young adults with disabilities. It will also house a coworking space and conference center.
