Zach Linsey is founder and chief executive of Building With Beans. Daniel Balke is a member of Building With Beans’s board of directors.
The D.C. Council’s proposed Made in D.C. Program Establishment Act of 2015 has great potential to further cultivate the District’s thriving small-business community. But, as drafted, it misses an opportunity to specifically address the structural inequities that afflict our city. To fulfill its promise, the bill should include a “social impact” provision that encourages businesses drawing on its support to consciously reinvest in the neighborhoods in which they work by providing residents with training, jobs and other support they need to lift themselves out of poverty.
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