Council approves 'extremely blighted' label from 24th to 36th streets
OMAHA — People who buy a home to live in between roughly 24th and 36th streets, from Dodge Street south to Pacific Street, could qualify for a state income tax credit of up to $5,000, after the Omaha City Council voted 7-0 Tuesday to designate the area an "extremely blighted area," according to the meeting video. Council President Danny Begley said the Field Club and Leavenworth neighborhoods sit along its boundary.
The label is a term from Nebraska's Community Development Law, and city planner Bridget Hadley told the council the city knows many people find it offensive. She said it does three things: it opens the home-buyer credit for people who make a home there their main residence; it gives affordable housing developers a preference when they apply to the state's housing trust fund; and it can allow a longer financing term for redevelopment in areas that are hard to rebuild.
To qualify, an area must already be a community redevelopment area and, by census data, have unemployment at least 150% of the state average and poverty above 15%, Hadley said. She said the request came from a potential project seeking tax increment financing, or TIF, which uses the added property taxes from a project's higher value to pay off its debt. City planning has brought about five such designations in about seven years, she said.
Scott Dobbie of Greenslate Development Partners said the firm is working to turn a vacant lot at 24th and Dodge into 186 apartments priced for households at or below the area's median income, though he said the resolution "isn't about our project."
Several residents spoke against it. They said census tracts don't match neighborhoods, that large parts of the area are not blighted, and that the process looked driven by developers. One speaker said TIF projects don't pay taxes for police, fire and schools.
Hadley answered that while some say the area is not economically stressed, pockets of it are, and the census data qualified it. She pointed to new businesses in the Blackstone district as an example of what these tools can help bring. Asked by Begley, she confirmed that during a TIF, taxes on a property's original value keep going to schools, police, fire and other governments.
Source: Omaha City Council meeting, Nov. 10, 2026, official video (item 7), with the meeting transcript via Citizen Portal; council member names from the Douglas County Election Commission.
How we checked this: Reported from the Omaha City Council's Nov. 10, 2026, meeting video and its transcript (via Citizen Portal) and the Douglas County Election Commission's list of elected officials, opened Nov. 11, 2026, at 5:28 a.m. CT, and checked against the record by our copy desk before publishing.