Toward a New Theory of Community Economic Development

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2 Toward a New Theory of Community Economic Development By Scott L. Cummings and Gregory Volz Scott L. Cummings is acting professor of law, UCLA School of Law, Box , Los Angeles, CA ; ; cummings@law.ucla.edu. Gregory Volz is executive director, Delaware County Legal Assistance Association, 410 Welsh St., Chester, PA 19013; ; gregvolz@hotmail.com. What is the future of community economic development (CED)? In many ways, CED lawyers and activists are at a crossroads. The successes of what has been termed the CED movement are well chronicled community-based organizations and advocates have been critical to increasing the supply of affordable housing, expanding the pool of jobs, and leveraging private sector investment in low-income communities. 1 Yet the limitations of CED strategies must also be confronted. Despite the expansion of CED programs over the past decade, community-based interventions have not succeeded in seriously challenging the intransigence of urban poverty and inequality. 2 The conventional view of CED emphasizes the significance of neighborhoodlevel intervention to revitalize underserved local markets. The idea is that communitybased organizations can empower geographically discrete localities by channeling resources into communities to build affordable housing, foster community-controlled business enterprises, and provide important supplemental services such as job training and child care. This view of CED is a powerful one and has largely determined the strategy employed by CED practitioners over the past thirty years. But CED is not just a strategy to be pursued it is an ideal to be achieved. And that ideal relates as much to notions of economic equity as it does to community empowerment. That is, the notion of promoting active community involvement in local decision making, while of crucial importance, is not the endpoint of CED advocacy. We must also measure success by the degree to which we are able to translate this community participation into structural reforms that actually distribute significant resources to low-income communities. The question thus becomes, How do we reimagine CED to promote the twin goals of economic equity and empowerment? There is no easy answer to this question. However, what is clear from the outstanding contributions to this special issue of CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW is that CED is being reinterpreted by practitioners on the ground in a way that connects community-based lawyering to a broader movement for economic justice. The experiences and insights of the authors of articles in this REVIEW issue raise the stakes in our quest to redefine notions of effective CED advocacy and take the first step in initiating a broader dialogue about what must be done. The authors were asked to address the following specific issues in 1 See WILLIAM H. SIMON, THE COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT: LAW, BUSINESS AND THE NEW SOCIAL POLICY (2001). 2 See DAVID RUSK, INSIDE GAME OUTSIDE GAME: WINNING STRATEGIES FOR SAVING URBAN AMERICA (1999). 158 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003

3 their reflections on CED: Does CED advance an effective legal strategy to address concentrated poverty and racial injustice? What role should lawyers play in advancing a social movement to ameliorate poverty? Can a persuasive case be made that CED is an effective use of the scarce resources available to federally funded and other public interest law organizations? Our own article is a critical reflection on our response to each of these questions and suggests a way of synthesizing our somewhat disparate views into a coherent antipoverty approach. In particular, we believe that what emerges from this dialogue is a provocative new direction in CED one that recognizes the need to connect local empowerment strategies with a broadbased reform agenda that brings together lawyers and other community stakeholders to advance a more equitable CED. 3 This model prioritizes economic justice which we use to mean the equitable distribution of the economic benefits of urban development programs over economic development per se which has focused primarily on bricks and mortar construction and the expansion of for-profit initiatives as an end in itself. As we make clear here, this model of CED is not meant to supplant the conventional community-centered version; rather we propose that advocates and policymakers should integrate the community-based approach into a broader economic justice framework that promotes equitable growth strategies at the regional level. I. Excavating the Future: The Political History of Urban Poverty In thinking about where CED has been and where it is going, one must reflect on its particular historical relation to urban poverty. We believe that one deficiency of the conventional approach to CED is that it has operated primarily at the level of the inside game that is, CED has treated low-income communities as isolated markets amenable to exclusively local remedial economic action. 4 Yet, as Penda Hair notes in her article on community justice lawyering, the roots of racial and economic segregation in urban areas have a peculiar political, as well as economic, history. The story here is all too familiar. Peter Dreier and his colleagues have shown how, at the federal level, large subsidies to build freeways, explicitly discriminatory federal home mortgage lending practices which redlined inner cities, and subsidies for homeownership through the mortgage interest deduction have been a powerful impetus to suburbanization. 5 As central cities declined under the weight of these programs, the federal response often served to exacerbate the problem. For instance, urban renewal became associated with clearing away slums adjacent to downtown business areas, resulting in massive displacement and resegregation in other urban neighborhoods. Public housing built for these displaced residents was frequently located by design in racially and economically segregated neighborhoods. The result of these policies has been a legacy of urban inequality that has constrained the choices of low-income people and distorted perceptions of the viability of low-income community business environments. Local government policies have interacted with federal programs to facilitate the urban-suburban divide. Affluent suburban enclaves have been able to become separately incorporated jurisdictions, which use their land-use powers to zone out apartment buildings and thus effectively exclude low-income residents. The overlay of historical and current practices of racial discrimination means that these economic boundaries are explicitly racial ones. Local jurisdictional control over the provision of social services like education and 3 See Angela Glover Blackwell, Promoting Equitable Development, 34 IND. L. REV (2001). 4 See RUSK, supra note 2. 5 PETER DREIER ET AL., PLACE MATTERS: METROPOLITICS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (2001). JULY AUGUST 2003 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 159

4 the ability to use tax revenues to promote business development through subsidies has resulted in a geography of regional development stratified by race and class. CED emerged as a response to this political legacy of urban disinvestment. The concept of using indigenous business development to promote economic equality for disenfranchised groups, particular African Americans, has deep roots in the struggle for civil rights. 6 In the 1960s civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality increasingly turned their attention to the question of economic equality. Yet the policy response to the demand for coordinated antipoverty programs was mixed. While the federal government initiated programs that established the institutional framework of CED, it did so in a way that sidestepped the multidimensional political and economic underpinnings of urban poverty and avoided the thorny issue of race. For instance, the 1964 War on Poverty s Community Action Program (CAP) sought to bring together a coalition of diverse community institutions under the umbrella of community action agencies, which were charged with administering local antipoverty initiatives in economic development, education, health, and housing. 7 However, while these community action agencies mounted successful challenges to the institutional practices of schools, welfare agencies, and housing authorities, they were widely condemned as failing to achieve their goal of enlisting the maximum feasible participation of community members in the implementation of antipoverty initiatives. 8 Further, although CAP sought to foster coalition building, it did so only at the local level and failed to envision a strategy for linking local coalitions into a broader reform movement. 9 The War on Poverty s focus on localism also gave rise to the most important institutional actors in the CED field: community development corporations (CDCs). 10 The CDCs that emerged from the original community action agencies have been critical grass-roots actors, particularly in developing low-income housing and commercial retail projects. However, their focus on neighborhood-specific strategies and the priority given to development as an institutional goal has taken many CDCs away from engaging broader political issues of regional equity. While the work they do continues to be of vital importance to low-income communities, they are, by themselves, unable to address the structural determinants of urban poverty. A new paradigm is therefore needed one that draws on the strengths of the community-based approach while also heeding the lessons that the political history of urban development highlights. II. Redefining Community Economic Development We believe that the articles in this REVIEW issue suggest the outlines of a new CED approach that directly confronts the political nature of urban development and defines collective strategies for promoting economic justice. It draws upon the legacy of CED as a civil rights strategy and conceives of CED lawyering as part of a broader project of connecting different 6 See Scott L. Cummings, Community Economic Development as Progressive Politics: Toward a Grassroots Movement for Economic Justice, 54 STAN. L. REV. 399, (2001). 7 See ROBERT HALPREN, REBUILDING THE INNER CITY: A HISTORY OF NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES 108 (1995). 8 On community action agencies mounting successful challenges to institutional practices, see id. at Although the Community Action Program did not spur broad-based changes, it did support local organizing initiatives around welfare rights that laid the foundation for the establishment of groups such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and others dedicated to advancing structural economic and political reform through multiracial community organizing. See Cummings, supra note 6, at See NEAL R. PEARCE & CAROL F. STEINBACH, CORRECTIVE CAPITALISM: THE RISE OF AMERICA S COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONS 20 (1987). 160 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003

5 stakeholders to advance a systemic antipoverty agenda. The range of projects and experiences represented here underscores the critical need to devise programs that not only expand wealth but also make sure that the wealth generated is shared fairly with the entire community. In other words, CED must promote high-road development development that links regional growth to broad-based prosperity through mechanisms that raise wages, increase employment, and support a robust and plural mosaic of urban communities. This approach is designed to produce long-term economic benefits for business and communities alike by promoting a better trained and more productive work force; reducing the strain on local governmental finances and infrastructure that poverty creates; and diffusing tension and distrust rooted in ongoing economic disparity. This new CED is defined by an emphasis on regionalism, coalition-based strategies, racial justice, and community accountability. A. Linking Community-Based and Regional Equity Strategies First, what is striking about the new wave of CED advocacy is that it takes seriously the link between local communities and broader regional dynamics. This means that the goal of CED is not just fostering local businesses or augmenting the community housing stock, but also dealing directly with the interplay of federal and local policies that have promoted racial and economic segregation. One prominent example of this regional strategy has been in work-force development. Advocates have begun to link job training to regional employment opportunities through sectoral employment interventions, which identify highgrowth industries in the regional economy and then develop job-training programs to move low-income workers into targeted industries. For example, Ross Dolloff discusses the role of Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn, Massachusetts, in designing a job-training program to move vulnerable workers into regional demand occupations, such as machinists and welders. 11 In Chester, Pennsylvania, the Delaware County Legal Assistance Association worked with several community-based organizations to initiate a sectoral employment intervention that leveraged government funding to create work-force development programs targeting individuals with multiple barriers to employment. 12 Legal services lawyers in Los Angeles worked on a similar project focused on the health care industry. In another example of this regional orientation, legal services providers have sought to address the spatial mismatch between low-income workers and jobs by implementing projects focusing on issues of transportation equity. 13 For instance, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles works to overcome transportation-related barriers to employment by helping clients get suspended driver s licenses reinstated, while advocating greater equity in the planning of regional transportation projects. 14 The legal aid foundation has also been successful in leveraging jobs for low-income workers through regional public works projects. 15 While these strategies are promising, more work is needed to reframe CED in regional terms. To address disparities created by the urban-suburban wealth divide, advocates should focus on promoting the regional coordination of federal antipoverty monies, such as community development block grants, and fostering the 11 See Ross Dolloff & Marc Potvin, Community Lawyering Why Now?, in this issue. 12 See Greg Volz & Brad Caftel, Job Strategies in the Era of Welfare Reform: A Community- Based Model of Legal Services, 33 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 569 (2000). 13 Spatial mismatch refers to the physical location of jobs in an area that is geographically separated from where low-income workers reside. 14 See Nona Liegeois et al., Helping Low-Income People Get Decent Jobs: One Legal Services Program s Approach, 33 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 279, (Sept. Oct. 1999). 15 Id. at 285. JULY AUGUST 2003 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 161

6 regional coordination of local redevelopment to avoid the race to the bottom that results from adjacent jurisdictions competing for business through tax breaks. 16 On the housing front, a commitment to regionalism means building a collective process for managing the issues of gentrification and displacement. Strategies for addressing the consequences of gentrification include establishing community land trusts, authorizing housing trust funds, expanding inclusionary zoning ordinances, and implementing linkage programs. Again, implementing these programs with regional equity issues in mind will contribute to long-term growth and stability. B. Forging Community Coalitions The second feature of the equitable approach to CED is that it embraces a reconfigured notion of community one defined not by traditional neighborhood boundaries but by a common interest in redressing poverty and inequality. Here the equitable model of CED emphasizes the centrality of broad-based, multiracial coalitions of labor unions, faith-based institutions, community organizations, and other community stakeholders in making sure that the perspective of low-income and underserved communities is represented in crafting effective CED strategies. The question for antipoverty advocates is what institutional sectors will be catalysts for social change and how these sectors can be brought together in a viable coalition form. Again, this is in contrast to the CED conventional approach, which has been driven by locally based community development corporations. Yet, as the authors in this REVIEW issue underscore, the coalition-based approach does not disempower these organizations but rather incorporates their unique perspectives into a broader group of representatives committed to economic justice. Perhaps the best example of this is the South Florida Community Development Coalition described by John Little. That coalition, which comprises over forty community development corporations and other nonprofit groups, has created a multiracial power base that has vigorously advocated more resources for low-income neighborhoods and the adoption of more responsible redevelopment projects. 17 Little recounts, in particular, how the coalition engaged in a smart growth project to revitalize an abandoned commercial strip in a downtown area. This coalition strategy promotes planned development consistent with the desires of the community instead of the usual business-dominated development, which seldom is in the best interests of community residents. Similarly, as the Reverend Tim Suenram recounts, a legal services attorney has partnered with faith-based organizations to create, in Indiana, the Evansville Coalition for the Homeless, which has used the coalition structure to advocate against the injustice of poverty. 18 The members of this coalition have leveraged their collective strength to generate greater access to community resources, while the individual members work to support homeless citizens. One coalition member currently owns over forty units of low-income housing and operates transitional housing providing safe and decent quarters at far below market rate. A second member operates a forty-hour-per-week health center for lowincome persons who cannot afford private medical care. A third member recently announced that it had gathered political support for a ten-year plan to end homelessness in that community. These examples are consistent with broader trends toward coalition-based advocacy strategies. In particular, coalitions have been crucial to passing livingwage ordinances, which typically require private employers that contract with local governmental entities to pay their workers at a designated wage rate above the 16 See Blackwell, supra note 3, at See John Little, Legal Advocacy for Community Building in South Florida, in this issue. 18 See Tim Suenram, Minority Poverty and the Faith Community, in this issue. 162 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003

7 poverty line. 19 Similar coalitions have promoted greater accountability in redevelopment projects and have augmented resources for affordable housing. One of the main conceptual issues raised by this emphasis on coalitions is who the members should be. This is typically framed in terms of a debate between accountability and power. Coalitions should reflect the interests of low-income communities, and thus they should include strong community representatives, such as democratically accountable organizations or community residents themselves. Yet the coalition strategy, which derives in part from Saul Alinsky s model of building organizations of organizations, also requires that members wield sufficient clout to influence political and economic elites. 20 Along these lines, much attention has been paid to promoting coalitions of community organizations, faith-based institutions, and labor unions. This combination of players combines grass-roots accountability and institutions with resources and power. What our authors remind us is that there are two other critical players in this coalition strategy: institutions of higher education and philanthropic foundations. James T. Harris III and Ira Harkavy underscore the importance of incorporating colleges and universities as engaged civic institutions that can provide significant resources to reduce poverty and inequality in their local communities. 21 They highlight, in particular, the work that these consummate placedbased institutions can do in promoting service learning, volunteerism, and local investment in CED initiatives. Drawing upon the examples of Defiance College in Ohio and Widener University in Pennsylvania, they demonstrate how colleges and universities have used their educational resources to promote local priorities around education and work-force development. Another instance of this is occurring at the University of California at Los Angeles, which is sponsoring a large-scale funding initiative aimed at strengthening the economic development infrastructure in Los Angeles. We believe that if higher education is true to its historical roots of being the gatekeeper for knowledge, the finder of great truths, and the premier institution around which the rest of our society is built, then it must be the institution which accepts its social responsibility to grapple with the great issues of the society in which it thrives. Nor should we ignore the critical importance of including foundations as members of economic justice coalitions. As Raquiba LaBrie highlights, foundations can link antipoverty advocacy and social change activism. 22 Foundations specifically provide seed funding for grass-roots alliances, broker horizontal relationships between community groups as well as vertical relationships with political and economic elites, and supply technical support to develop a strong advocacy infrastructure. However, although foundations already provide critical funding for social change work, more resources are needed. As it stands, approximately 2 percent of foundation funding currently goes to support activities related to social change. 23 Raising this number by only a small amount could significantly advance the cause of economic justice. 19 See Selena Spain & Jean Wiley, The Living-Wage Ordinance: A First Step in Reducing Poverty, 32 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 252, 253 (1998). 20 See HARRY C. BOYTE, THE BACKYARD REVOLUTION: UNDERSTANDING THE NEW CITIZEN MOVEMENT 49 (1980). 21 See James T. Harris III & Ira Harkavy, Colleges, Universities, and Communities Advancing Social and Economic Justice, in this issue. 22 See Raquiba LaBrie, The Role of Foundations in Integrating Antipoverty Work into a Broader Systemic Change Agenda, in this issue. 23 See Robert O. Bothwell, The Decline of Progressive Policy and the New Philanthropy: Progressive Foundations and Other Alternatives to Mainstream Foundations Are Created and Become Substantial, But Fail to Reverse the Policy Decline, available at (last visited May 14, 2003). JULY AUGUST 2003 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 163

8 In short, by incorporating foundations, universities, and other large institutional players with grass-roots actors in reform-minded coalitions, CED advocates can build the political muscle to advance significant economic reforms. C. Race and Poverty The third feature of this new model of CED is its focus on bringing together multiracial coalitions in order to address explicitly the nexus between race and poverty. Indeed, race marks the boundaries of urban poverty: Communities with high poverty rates are disproportionately communities of color. 24 Some scholars have critiqued traditional CED programs as reinforcing notions of racial segregation by taking community borders as immutable. 25 The approach presented here seeks to cut across traditional neighborhood boundaries to create multiracial coalitions that can effectively redress poverty, while seeking to sustain the independence and vibrancy of the communities themselves. Hair in particular emphasizes that the changing terrain of racial justice advocacy has resulted in lawyers serving as counsel for community movements rather than individual clients. 26 In her view, CED must seek solutions to systemic racial inequality, rather than focusing on a litigation-oriented approach that attacks individual acts of racial discrimination. In her ground-breaking report to the Rockefeller Foundation, Louder Than Words, she describes the model of community justice lawyering, which integrates legal advocacy and grass-roots organizing effectively to combat racially exclusionary practices. 27 In that report she highlights the successes of multiple instances of successful community lawyering initiatives, including the antisweatshop movement in Los Angeles s garment industry, the Los Angeles Bus Rider s Union campaign, and the movement to preserve community control over part of Boston s Chinatown. Drawing from Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres s The Miner s Canary, LaBrie gives a compelling account of the multiracial labor-organizing campaign to gain union status for low-wage workers in the Greensboro, North Carolina, Kmart distribution center, which had a majority nonwhite work force. 28 By framing Kmart s failure to pay workers a living wage as a multiracial issue of labor standards, community leaders were able to mobilize white and African American support for the organizing campaign, while still emphasizing the element of racial injustice. Building upon the success of these types of racial justice campaigns, LaBrie notes that a group of foundations has formed the Funders Collaborative for Racial Justice Innovation to support partnerships between community organizations and lawyers working to redress structural racial inequality. For CED to remain a vital tool for economic reform, it must be part of this racial justice movement. Although Hair and LaBrie do not generally address lawyering instances that fall squarely in the realm of what many would consider CED, their analyses challenge us to think about ways of integrating legal advocacy and grassroots action to achieve systemic change. D. Accountability The final aspect of this new approach to CED is a focus on community accountability. The equitable CED model works to promote accountability by devising mechanisms that target the benefits of development to low-income community 24 See PAUL JARGOWSKY, POVERTY AND PLACE: GHETTOS, BARRIOS, AND THE AMERICAN CITY 61 (1997). 25 See Audrey G. McFarlance, Race, Space, and Place: The Geography of Economic Development, 36 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 295, 346 (1999). 26 See Penda D. Hair, Community Justice Lawyering and Community Economic Development Practice, in this issue. 27 See PENDA D. HAIR, LOUDER THAN WORDS: LAWYERS, COMMUNITIES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE (2001). 28 Lani Guinier & Gerald Torres, THE MINER S CANARY: ENLISTING RACE, RESISTING POWER, TRANSFORMING DEMOCRACY (2001). 164 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003

9 residents. Given the politics of urban development, the question is, How do we marshal political resources to create local markets that we think are desirable? The answer to this question implicates questions not only of business efficiency but also of overall equity. Consider the issue of job training. We have already discussed the need for a regional approach to job-training services. We underscore here that developing these services in a fashion accountable to lowincome constituencies is also crucial. From the perspective of low-income job seekers, linking job training with high-growth industries is only a partial solution to the problem facing low-wage workers. A 2000 study on Los Angeles indicated that, of the ten fastest-growing occupation categories in the city, seven paid on average less than $8.50 per hour. 29 These are jobs in the retail, garment, security, and cleaning industries. Thus sectoral employment interventions must train workers for jobs in high-growth and high-wage industry clusters. Dolloff s example of the machinists and welders program in Lynn, Massachusetts, clearly makes this link between training and decent wages. LaBrie s account of the Open Society Institute s venture capital fund in Baltimore squarely raises the difficult balancing act between market return and community accountability. The Baltimore Fund has $15 million in equity investments from foundations and private investors and is seeking to reinvest that money in small businesses and commercial projects that will produce high-quality jobs. To advance this goal, the fund integrates its investment activity with a work-force development approach geared toward recruiting and retaining low-income workers at portfolio firms. Achieving the dual goals of accountability and capital return is complicated in this context, and the fund will have to manage business investment and growth in such a way that also maximizes social return. 30 Another way of ensuring that lowincome communities receive their fair share of development benefits is to make the redevelopment process itself more accountable. This means carefully tracking the type and quantity of public subsidies that businesses receive and linking those subsidies to tangible community outcomes. Thus redevelopment should be devised and implemented with community input, and promises of job creation and housing should be backed up with enforceable agreements by businesses to pay living wage, meet local hiring goals, and build housing affordable to the poorest community residents. The most significant recent example in this regard is the success of the Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice, a broad-based coalition of community organizations, neighborhood developers, unions, and environmental groups that won a comprehensive community-benefits agreement from the developers of the planned expansion of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. 31 As part of the accord, the developers of the proposed sports and entertainment complex, as well as project tenants, agreed to hire local residents for 70 percent of the 29 See L.A. ALLIANCE FOR A NEW ECON., THE OTHER LOS ANGELES: THE WORKING POOR IN THE CITY OF THE 21ST CENTURY viii (2000), available at wps2000. pdf (last visited May 13, 2003). 30 See ROBERTS ENTER. DEV. FUND, SOCIAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT METHODOLOGY PAPER (2001), available at 31 See Lee Romney, Community, Developers Agree on Staples Plan Deal, L.A. TIMES, May 31, 2001, at A1. JULY AUGUST 2003 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 165

10 5,500 jobs to be created by the project and to pay the workers living wage. The developers also agreed to set aside park space and to put money into an affordable-housing fund for the community. Innovative foundation-community collaborations have also created CED initiatives with a greater level of community accountability. One interesting example of this, in southeast San Diego, is Market Creek Plaza, a twenty-acre commercial development project initiated by the Jacobs Center for Nonprofit Innovation, an operating foundation. The project was designed and implemented with multiple layers of community engagement. 32 Most significant, the structure of the commercial project has been designed to allow community residents to purchase shares in the development itself giving them an ownership interest in the property. The center is also establishing a neighborhood-controlled foundation that will reinvest profits from the development into the community. III. Law, Lawyers, and Social Change We argue that an equitable approach to CED along the lines outlined above responds to some of the deficiencies of the conventional CED model and can more effectively redress issues of poverty and inequality. The next question is, What is the role of lawyers in advancing this model? We emphasize three roles: representation, education, and coordination. One point that this REVIEW issue makes clear is that lawyers can indeed contribute to economic and racial justice movements by employing transactional representational techniques. Operating within the conventional model of CED, lawyers can negotiate the deal and broker positive economic benefits similar to the strategies utilized by private corporate counsel. Creatively seizing economic opportunities for the client community is one of the most important functions of aggressive legal advocacy. This type of representation is traditionally undertaken in connection with the work of community development corporations, which receive legal assistance such as structuring corporate entities, filing for state and federal tax exemption, adopting appropriate corporate governance protocols, and implementing complex real estate transactions. Just as lawyers assist private developers in consummating deals, so low-income residents need legal counsel to participate effectively in economic development processes. CED lawyers can assist in supporting broader economic justice initiatives. For instance, legal advocacy has been crucial to living-wage campaigns, as lawyers have advised community groups on the technical aspects of living-wage laws, negotiated the key points of local ordinances, and drafted appropriate language. Lawyers have helped similarly to negotiate and draft community-benefits packages connected with redevelopment projects, advised community coalitions on aspects of federal work-force development laws that support job-training programs for low-income workers, and utilized federal linkage programs, such as Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, to stimulate business development and create jobs for clients. 33 Without legal counsel, low-income people are at a disadvantage in leveraging benefits from business development and opportunities for economic advancement that occur within their own communities. CED lawyers can analyze and disseminate educational information that is important to ensure the fair distribution of government resources. A major issue is that public dollars intended to benefit low-income communities often fail to achieve their potential. Due to a variety of constraints, legal services programs have 32 See PolicyLink, A Journey Toward Ownership: Community Engagement in Market Creek Plaza (2003) (on file with Scott L. Cummings and Gregory Volz). 33 Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, 12 U.S.C. 1701u (2002). 166 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003

11 largely been unable to take the time to analyze the public funding streams that exist within their client communities. Programs such as federal community development block grants, the federal Workforce Investment Act, and federal and state incentive zones often are implemented without any serious analysis from the client community s perspective of how the funds are spent, whether clients understand and meaningfully participate in these programs, and whether they truly benefit low-income communities. One step toward fostering greater programmatic accountability is to disseminate information about the substantive and procedural aspects of antipoverty programs. 34 CED lawyers must make these antipoverty programs more transparent by educating community members and organizations about their goals and processes. For instance, our experience has showed that frequently public notice of hearings to take input from residents of low-income communities occurs through methods not reasonably calculated to gather meaningful input. These public hearings are frequently scheduled at a time and place ill-suited for maximum client participation. Even if lowincome persons have sufficient notice, and the hearings take place at a reasonable time and place, the client community often needs the benefit of trained legal counsel to understand adequately the complexity and nuances of these programs. CED lawyers accordingly must vigilantly monitor these moments of community participation and devise strategies to convey this information to relevant community actors. Lawyers can coordinate CED activities. As is true in other social change contexts, lawyers occupy a central mediating function. The range of institutional actors engaged in economic reform activity is striking, and the institutional interests at stake are often in great tension. One need only look at the historic antagonism between labor and immigrant groups to understand that the work of bringing together and maintaining diverse progressive coalitions is arduous. CED lawyers can be critical links between groups with disparate or conflicting interests, tying them together in a way that advances a common agenda. This may be true because lawyers share a common set of professional understandings, are conduits for communications between different groups, or have access to institutional resources that can strengthen grass-roots coalitions. 35 This coordination role is captured in Hair s notion of community justice lawyering, which emphasizes nontraditional strategies such as relationship building and interdependent problem solving designed to foster community self-determination. IV. Conclusion In reviewing the contributions to this REVIEW special issue, we have suggested that CED is being reimagined from within that lawyers and activists have begun to employ innovative techniques that directly leverage community benefits while promoting community empowerment. As is clear from our analysis, we believe that this type of equitable CED practice can prove more effective in tackling the structural dimensions of poverty and inequality. We also have argued that lawyers can assist in advancing this con- 34 Antipoverty programs include the familiar public housing, welfare, and community development block grants. Close analysis of public funding streams (both federal and state) may reveal other antipoverty programs requiring either or both (1) public notice and comment or (2) the opportunity to participate meaningfully in planning and implementation. See generally Tenant Participation and Tenant Opportunities in Public Housing Regulations, 24 C.F.R. 964 et seq. (1999) (public housing); Workforce Investment Act of 1998, 29 U.S.C et seq. (job training); Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Pub. L. No , 110 Stat (1996) (codified in scattered sections of 8 U.S.C. and 42 U.S.C.) (public welfare); Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Pub. L. No , 88 Stat. 633 (codified at 42 U.S.C et seq. (1994)) (community development block grants); 20 U.S.C et seq. (public education). 35 See John P. Heinz et al., Lawyers for Conservative Causes: Clients, Ideology, and Social Distance, 37 L. & SOC Y REV. 5, 11 (2003). JULY AUGUST 2003 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 167

12 ception of CED. In closing, we emphasize why legal services organizations must invest in CED as a cost-effective antipoverty strategy. The primary legal delivery system utilized by federally funded legal services programs has been individual case-bycase advocacy. At an earlier time, class action lawsuits and legislative advocacy were permitted, but these tools are now restricted by federal regulations. As a result, the past several years have witnessed the creation of increasing numbers of nonfederally funded legal services programs. These programs can engage in legislative advocacy and class action lawsuits, but size and funding constraints may limit the impact they can have on poverty. We suggest that CED can complement traditional strategies in a way that addresses some of the limitations imposed by federal restrictions and resource constraints. For one, CED lawyers can represent community groups that are working to advance broad-based economic reforms. Thus CED lawyers can work with groups engaged at both the grass-roots and policy levels in promoting living-wage, accountable redevelopment, and workforce development initiatives. CED strategies are effective in leveraging resources for low-income communities. As Dolloff discusses, this happens both through traditional investment strategies and community-organizing initiatives. In Lynn, Massachusetts, Neighborhood Legal Services has spent approximately $200,000 on program expenses, used to leverage $35 million in community benefits in the form of a community health center, lowincome housing, and a targeted job-training program. By leveraging funds, creating partnerships with new institutions, and forging strong neighborhood-based alliances, the Lynn experience shows that CED strategies can have on low-income communities a multiplier effect that makes it a critical part of a broader legal services program. In 1962 Michael Harrington s The Other America put to Americans the central question, Where was the will of the American people to reduce poverty? The question still lurks below the surface of public policy debates about the earned income credit, enterprise zones, Workforce Investment Act funding, community development block grants, and other antipoverty programs. Despite the important steps that these government policies represent, we continue to be faced with the question of political will: How can we begin to rebuild an institutional framework that supports a more equitable allocation of political and economic resources? This REVIEW special issue suggests that a new vision of CED is required to advance this goal, one that responds effectively to the political as well as the economic dimensions of poverty. As the examples in this issue underscore, a robust CED must meld the tradition of civil rights and community-based advocacy with the necessity of market-based interventions to create economically viable low-income communities. It must address questions of regional inequality, include a wide array of institutional players, and draw upon a broad scope of legal techniques. In this way we can redefine CED so as not to repeat the cycle of reinvestment and displacement that has plagued urban areas for more than half a century. Instead we can learn from the past to devise strategies that advance equitable development strategies while promoting a larger-scale movement for economic justice. 168 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JULY AUGUST 2003