The Bay Area could get nearly 500 additional Opportunity Zones as part of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The Opportunity Zone 2.0 program, first introduced with President Trump’s tax cuts in 2017, was made permanent with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, opening up a total of 480 census tracts in the Bay Area to greater investment, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
The San Francisco region stands to benefit the most from the plan, which offers tax incentives to those investing in low-income communities. There are 346 potential Opportunity Zones in the counties within the city’s metro area, while down south in Silicon Valley, there are 134 census tracts that qualify under the federal government’s new tax and spending changes to the Opportunity Zone program, according to the Business Times.
Alameda County, home to enclaves like Oakland and Berkeley, topped the list with 105 potential Opportunity Zones. San Francisco and Santa Clara counties followed with 88 zones each.
Contra Costa County is next with 66 possible Opportunity Zones, according to census data analyzed by the Business Times.
Elsewhere in the San Francisco region, Solano County has 22 such zones, Sonoma County has 13, Marin County has 12, and Napa County has six. In Silicon Valley, Monterey County has 26 possible Opportunity Zones, Santa Cruz County has 14, and San Benito County has six.
Under the original Opportunity Zone program passed as part of Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 42,176 census tracks were eligible to become designated Opportunity Zones. But in the new version of the program, the number of eligible tracts could drop by more than 20 percent.
In the new law, Congress changed the definition of “low-income community” to census tracts with a median household income not exceeding 70 percent of an area’s median income — a decrease from 80 percent previously. It would also make any census tract that has a poverty rate above 20 percent eligible for the program.
The federal government hasn’t published an official list of eligible tracts yet. Governors have July 1 of next year to identify their targeted tracts for the program.
California leads the country for most tracts eligible for the program, with 2,738 pieces of land available for investment incentives. Los Angeles County tops the list with 846 tracts eligible for Opportunity Zone 2.0 tax breaks.
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