Celia Contreras, mother of two boys, lost her $6.75-an-hour job as a linen clerk when the Holiday Inn where she worked closed in 1999. But today she’s back at the same location, making $12 an hour plus health insurance, in the new, redeveloped Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. Now, says Contreras, she’s “able to save and to splurge, to provide my children with a better life.”

Sonia Zepeda lives nearby and works with Contreras in the housekeeping department at the Renaissance Hollywood. It’s much closer to home than her last job in Pasadena and pays $12.20 plus health insurance, a big increase from $7.77 with no benefits. Now she can send more to her kids back in Guatemala, and “they are having a better life because of it.”

Community benefits

Contreras and Zepeda got their jobs after the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and other community organizations pressured the developer of the “ Hollywood and Highland” hotel/shopping/ entertainment complex to meet residents’ needs for well-paid jobs. The developer agreed to provide a local hiring program, on-site job training, and a guarantee of 1,000 living-wage jobs. That was “our first shot at winning some community benefits” from a developer, says Roxana Tynan, LAANE’s accountable development director.

Since then, LAANE has been at the forefront of negotiating community benefits agreements (CBAs) in a half-dozen Los Angeles development projects, with twice that number in the works. “In the long run,” says Tynan, “we’d like to get policies in place that assure a basic package for every development.”

Jobs and housing

Socorro Callejas, a stay-at-home mother of two, first learned from Tynan that developers were planning to build a huge hotel complex just seven blocks from her house. Callejas got involved in negotiations with the developer and spoke up at City Hall. “I feel good because I was working with the developers and they know me,” she says. “There are a lot of people in this community who are afraid to say what we need, but if I can talk for them, it’s a good thing.”

After negotiating with residents, the developer signed a community benefits agreement including a local hiring program, on-site job training, living wage jobs with health benefits—and more than 50 units of much-needed affordable housing. “It took a lot of energy and time,” says Callejas, but “I learned that if you fight for something you can have it.”

Leadership and vision

In another recent CBA negotiation, neighbors got involved when Los Angeles Airport (LAX) was planning to expand. Maria Verduzco-Smith is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and president of the neighborhood coordinating council for Lennox, a low-income, mainly Spanish-speaking, unincorporated area near LAX.

With LAANE’s coaching, Verduzco-Smith became involved in meetings with developers. “At first it was very intimating, and I thought I’d just sit there and not say anything,” she says. But she found herself explaining the needs of people in her community—from finding new jobs to keeping trucks off local streets.

“ Los Angeles just happens to be at this incredible moment where there is this presence of leadership and vision for advocates who are interested in working together for building common power,” said Chereesse Thymes of the Partnership for Working Families. “And that is the model that we are all striving for as we try to work across the country.”

Going statewide

Learning from Angelenos, a coalition of San Jose community organizations recently negotiated a CBA with the developer of an upscale shopping, residential, and entertainment district downtown. The project is receiving major public subsidies—all the more reason for insisting on accountability, neighbors say. The CBA was approved in April 2003, with participation from unions, clergy, ACORN, neighborhood residents, and downtown small business owners. It includes an increase in affordable housing units (from the 35 first proposed to 509), space for child care, and living wage jobs.

In the East Bay, several organizations are working on developing the CBA process, notably the East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Development.

Reporting by Yulisa Zulaica contributed to this story.

Making developers accountable to Communities

A developer builds a new entertainment or shopping center in a low-income community. The neighbors benefit from all the new jobs and facilities, right?

Not necessarily. Often jobs and other benefits go to people outside the area.

That’s why community groups in Los Angeles and elsewhere are beginning to work out “Community Benefits Agreements” (CBAs), legal contracts between developers and community organizations that spell out benefits the development will bring to local residents—things like quality jobs, local hiring and job training, affordable housing, environmental improvements and, in some cases, community services such as health clinics or youth centers.

Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) has been at the forefront of many campaigns for accountable development. The campaigns:

• “Try to get as many people as possible involved, so they have a lot of credibility,” says Roxana Tynan, LAANE’s accountable development director. Involve unions, schools, churches, environmental groups, and neighborhood activists.

• Figure out what’s important to the community—often that process begins with a large community meeting. The top concerns are usually jobs, housing, neighborhood services, and environmental issues.

• Form a negotiating committee of community volunteers.

• Negotiate with the developer and get involved in the development process.

Most of the time, developers are willing to meet with representatives of the coalition, says Tynan—they know they need community support to make it through the city’s approval process. LAANE sends representatives to all meetings about the project. They make their voices heard and enlist the support of council members or other officials. “Generally developers recognize the power of existing groups and unions to give them a hard time,” says Tynan.

The process works best, says Chereesse Thymes, executive director of the Partnership for Working Families, “when (it’s) community-driven and reflective of an honest assessment of what that project means for the local people and what they themselves would like to see occur at that site.”

Resources

• Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, 213-977-9400, www.laane.org
• LAANE’s handbook on Community Benefits Agreements is at www.california-partnership.org/
• Working Partnerships USA (in San Jose), 408-269-7872, www.wpusa.org
• Partnership for Working Families, (statewide), 510-834-8503, www.california-partnership.org
• East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Development, 510-893-7106