Lack of community representation, vague language and lack of follow-up are a few pitfalls to avoid.
By Alma Campos, Sarah Conway and Phoebe Mogharei, City Bureau
(Illustration: Cori Lin/City Bureau)
This article is part of Will That New Development Benefit Your Community? The People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements and Alternatives.
A strong Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) requires a solid coalition of community residents that reaches out to as many residents as possible to build power and to solicit input on what the exact benefits should be. According to a report on CBAs co-published by Good Jobs First and Partnership for Working Families, “a community group’s ability to win a CBA is directly related to how much power it has organized.” When the coalition is small or there is very little input, it has less leverage and there is a danger that people negotiating benefits are not representative of the community as a whole.
The Hatchery Chicago in East Garfield Park, for instance, worked with one community organization, not a broad-based coalition when the new food and beverage incubator came to the neighborhood (see, The Hatchery Chicago: What Does It Mean to Represent a Community?). If the developer is willing to only meet with certain people or organizations, this is a red flag. Additionally, the developer may want to offer money to an organization and call it a deal, rather than to be bound legally by a long-term contract with specific commitments and goals.
The commitments are vague and lack accountability.
A CBA is a legal contract, and therefore it should be legally binding. However, sometimes the lawyers for the developer may insert vague language that makes it not enforceable.
A CBA should include specific promises with an enforcement mechanism and defined consequences. This may include hiring an independent compliance monitor that’s paid for by the developer and listing specific remedies to potential problems or penalties agreed upon by both parties, such as monetary damages or injunctive relief in court, according to the Community Benefits Law Center and Partnership for Working Families. (An injunction is when the court orders one party to act—or not act—in a certain way, or otherwise face potential criminal or civil penalties.)
A strong CBA should clearly explain how many people or what communities it intends to help (their age, gender, race, income level and other demographic data) and include deadlines for meeting goals. Without specifics, it’s hard to prove that a developer isn’t meeting its commitments, which makes it hard to hold the developer accountable both in and out of court.
The agreement doesn’t include commitments on the community’s behalf.
Another reason the CBA could not hold up in court is it does not include promises from both parties. If community members do not fulfill their obligations in the CBA, or if there are no obligations listed at all, then it is harder for residents to sue a developer for breaching the contract.
It’s important to decide collectively on whether you want a legally enforceable CBA or not. It’s possible to include consequences for non-CBA agreements made with a developer, especially by using “soft power” to influence Chicago’s development process. For example, if a developer does not follow through on their commitments, you could approach your alder about using their aldermanic prerogative to hold up funding, zoning or permitting processes (if they have not already taken place) and prevent the developer from working in your ward in the future.
The coalition doesn’t monitor the development after it’s built.
Even if the community has an explicit, binding and broad-based CBA, the responsibility of monitoring and enforcing CBAs falls to the coalition and relies on their sustained organizing efforts. So after having won a CBA, the coalition must be able to monitor it for a certain period of time to make sure that the terms of the agreement are being upheld.
According to Good Jobs First and Partnership for Working Families, the form monitoring takes will depend on the specific benefits. Benefits that require long-term monitoring, like wage and hiring requirements, should include dates by which the developer has to report their data. In the best case, data should be verifiable and not just be self-reported by the developer. Also consider how to hold contractors who work for the developer accountable to wage and hiring requirements.
Will That New Development Benefit Your Community? The People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements and Alternatives informs, engages and equips Chicago residents to be active participants in the development process. Want to share this zine with your neighbors? You can order print copies in English and Spanish here.
Support City Bureau’s community-centered reporting by becoming a City Bureau sustaining donor today.
To get twice-monthly emails including Chicago news and events, sign up for City Bureau’s Chicago newsletter.