Rethinking "Community Benefit": From Binding Contracts to Standing Partnerships
When a new development breaks ground in a neighborhood, the people who live there don't always get a say in what it means for them. Will it bring jobs, or just traffic? Affordable homes, or higher rents? Over the past two decades, communities have turned to a tool designed to answer that question on their own terms: the Community Benefit Agreement, or CBA.
It’s worth understanding how CBAs work, what they've achieved, and how they compare to the model we developed here in Dallas through our Connected Communities Initiative (CCI).
What Is a Community Benefit Agreement?
A Community Benefit Agreement is a contract negotiated directly between a real estate developer and a coalition of community-based organizations, and sometimes local government, that spells out the specific benefits a project will deliver to the neighborhood. In exchange, the community coalition agrees to publicly support, or at least not oppose, the project as it moves through the approval process.
CBAs can address a bundle of community priorities, which may include:
Local hiring commitments
Living-wage requirements
Affordable housing set-asides
Job training and workforce development programs
Parks, green space, and other public amenities
Environmental mitigation
What sets a CBA apart from a developer's promises is enforceability. A properly structured CBA is a legally binding contract, meaning the community coalition that signs it has legal standing to hold the developer to its word. In some cases, the community benefits terms are also folded into the development agreement between the city and the developer, giving local government an additional avenue to enforce the commitments.
CBAs Promote Sustainable and Resilient Communities
CBAs build resilience and sustainability into development in a few ways; they keep decision-making local and they tie economic growth to the people in the community. Instead of a project being designed entirely by outside investors and approved from a distance, CBAs give residents, often communities of color and lower-income neighborhoods who are otherwise displaced or overlooked in development processes, a direct seat at the negotiating table.First-source hiring and workforce training provisions mean that when a project generates jobs, current residents have priority access to them.
They also protect against displacement. Affordable housing set-asides and anti-displacement provisions help ensure that revitalization doesn't price out the people who live there. Additionally, they create lasting infrastructure and public goods. Parks, community centers, and environmental mitigation commitments extend the benefits of a project well beyond its opening day, and well beyond the developer's initial investors. Lastly, the organizing required to negotiate a CBA, bringing together labor unions, faith groups, environmental organizations, and neighborhood associations, often outlasts the agreement itself, leaving communities equipped to advocate for themselves on the next project.
CBAs in Practice
The Staples Center / L.A. Live CBA (Los Angeles, 2001) is widely considered the first full-fledged CBA in the country, and is a model other agreements are measured against. After the first phase of the Staples Center arena displaced roughly 250 low-income residents and left the surrounding neighborhood dealing with traffic, noise, and few of the promised benefits, the Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice, representing more than 20 community, labor, and faith organizations, negotiated a binding agreement for the project's second phase. The developer committed to first-source hiring for displaced and low-income residents, living-wage jobs, affordable housing, and new parks, with an advisory committee established to monitor implementation. The community benefits secured were later valued at roughly $150 million — about double the city subsidy the project received.
The Atlanta BeltLine shows how CBA principles can scale to a massive, city-spanning redevelopment. Rather than negotiating a single contract, the BeltLine incorporated community benefit commitments into the project's governing ordinance, allowing coalitions to shape and oversee a 22-mile corridor of parks, trails, and transit-oriented development without losing the fundamental step of community involvement. (Power Switch Action)
Stand Up Nashville's MLS Stadium CBA (Nashville, 2018) paired a new soccer stadium with commitments to living-wage jobs, first-source hiring, affordable housing, and an on-site child-care center, benefits the city's mayor cited as central to his public support for the project.
CBAs in Trouble: An Enforcement Problem
CBAs are powerful because they're legally binding, but that strength is also a practical weakness. A contract is only as good as the community's ability to enforce it, and research on the subject points to a consistent gap between what CBAs promise and what actually gets delivered. An analysis of 72 CBAs for renewable energy, real estate, and other infrastructure projects found that resource gaps and limited government support are major barriers to enforcement, and that the agreements most likely to succeed are the ones with strong process-oriented mechanisms including independent monitoring committees, clear reporting templates, and neutral mediation, built in.
The World Resources Institute has documented the same problem from a different angle: many CBAs are written with vague, aspirational language, a developer agreeing to "strive to create local jobs," for example, that gives communities little actual recourse if the commitment isn't met. Agreements without specific benchmarks, timelines, and named responsibilities are harder to enforce than ones with binding, measurable terms. WRI also notes that CBAs frequently fail to plan for the long term.
A CBA can only protect a community as well as the coalition behind it can monitor it, and monitoring takes money, staff time, and legal capacity that many grassroots coalitions simply don't have. Community organizations, often volunteer-run, are expected to track a developer's compliance for years or decades after the ribbon-cutting.
DCH's Connected Communities Initiative: CBA Informed Model
DCH’s Connected Communities Initiative takes a related but distinct approach to the same goal; making sure development creates lasting benefit for the neighborhoods it touches. Unlike a single negotiated contract tied to one project, CCI is built around ongoing partnership. DCH works with Neighborhood Capacity Building Partners, organizations like the Queen City Neighborhood Association, to support resident-led leadership and local organizing over time. CCI addresses the same social determinants of health that CBAs often target, economic stability, education, safety, healthcare access, and social connection, but does so through two standing categories of relationships:
Capital Partners, who fund the physical spaces and infrastructure, like the digital lab and community center at Hillburn Hills, that make ongoing programming possible.
Program Partners, who deliver hands-on, skills-based programming directly to residents, from digital literacy and financial education to health and wellness workshops.
Community events, such as National Night Out, are woven in as relationship-building touchpoints.
Distinct Models Similar Goals
A CBA gives a community formal legal leverage, the right to sue for what was promised, but that leverage is only as strong as the coalition's ability to actually use it, and, as the research above shows. CCI sacrifices legal enforceability for something harder to write into a contract: a standing, adaptable relationship that isn't limited to the terms of one deal and doesn't expire when a single project is finished. A CBA makes the most sense when a single, large, controversial project needs a binding commitment before a community will support it. A model like CCI makes more sense for an organization like DCH, which is developing multiple properties across neighborhoods over many years and wants its relationship with residents to outlast a building.
Common Good Goal
Whether it's a contract or a partnership, the goal of CBAs and the DCH CCI leaves neighborhoods stronger. CBAs have proven communities can win substantial commitments from developers when they organize effectively, the Staples Center coalition secured $150 million in benefits, twice the public subsidy the project received. DCH has tried to build into the Connected Communities Initiative from the outset, a continuing commitment to the neighborhoods where we build.
Learn more about CCI here.
