Six years after a tornado destroyed much of Joplin, MO, the city is back. The population is larger now. Property values are higher now. And what role did government play in all this? They helped with the cleanup and they reduced the regulatory burden on construction, but when they tried to subsidize the rebuilding effort through tax increment financing (TIF), the developer that received the TIF money failed. And yet the people of Joplin pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and demonstrated for the country that subsidies are not needed to rebuild.
For more information, read our recent case study, Tax-Increment Financing in Post-Tornado Joplin.
