SF gets $45M from feds to back new businesses in low-income areas

San Francisco hopes tax credits will encourage businesses to invest in low-income neighborhoods like the Tenderloin.

SAN FRANCISCO – The City’s community investment fund will get $45 million in tax credit to support private investment in non-profits and businesses that directly serve San Francisco’s most economically distressed, low-income communities, Mayor Ed Lee announced recently.

The San Francisco Community Investment Fund was awarded $45 million from the New Markets Tax Credit program to help businesses use flexible financing to support manufacturing, retail, healthcare, food security, and affordable community and non-profit spaces.

This funding will be disbursed across various projects in the city to spur further private investments in qualified low-income neighborhoods, create permanent local jobs and provide greater access to community facilities and commercial goods and services.

The New Markets Tax Credit program is a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in effort to attract targeted investment in historically underinvested communities to improve the lives of residents of low-income neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin, South of Market, Mission, Chinatown, Visitacion Valley, Bayview Hunters Point and Treasure Island.

The program targets construction and capital improvement projects that deliver job creation for low-income people, commercial and community services, healthy foods, environment sustainability and flexible lease rates.

Since its inception, the SFCIF has successfully received and deployed $80 million in tax credit to businesses and non-profits such as College Track, a college-preparatory program for low-income high school students in Bayview, and the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market, which supplies restaurants, businesses, and residents located throughout San Francisco with fresh and healthy produce.

Over the past five years, the SFCIF has also deployed the funding to support the construction of projects such as SF Jazz and the Boys & Girls Club San Francisco in Western Addition, and the ACT Strand Theatre on Central Market.