Promise Zones announced by Obama

[Donald Hendricks]

CNN: Promise Zones are areas where the federal government provides tax incentives and grants to help communities tackle poverty. Obama first announced the initiative during last year's State of the Union speech.

On Thursday, Obama will announce the first Promise Zone locations. They're in San Antonio, Texas; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; southeastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

I can't help but notice that the one city that needs help in all aspects, Detroit, didn't make the list.

Being a long term resident of San Antonio, I am perplexed as to where in San Antonio that it is so impoverished that it garners intervention of the federal government. True, we do have a higher than average crime rate, but this wasn't always the case. The crime rate spiked with the relocation of Katrina refugees to the city, many who never left. Further, much of the crime problems can be linked to illegal immigrants and drug cartels. Our crime problem is nothing compared to what goes on blocks from the White House or in Chicago... Or Detroit!

We have a 5.6% unemployment rate, on par with Houston and Dallas metro areas (rated 9 of 50 http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laulrgma.htm ) . We have a strong military community, always growing medical training facilities, a tremendously strong tourist and convention sector and the Eagle Ford Shale project created 116,000 high paying mid skilled jobs in 2013 and a 61 billion economic impact on the region. This is all despite the federal government.

We have rougher areas, but what major city doesn't. There is nowhere in this city that I wouldn't go 24/7. This doesn't make sense to me. It screams of political payback for all that our Mayor did for the re-election of Obama.

I wait to see if and how I can take advantage of this Promise Zone to benefit my RE investing.