The development of CBAs in California. The degree of satisfaction differed amongst the interviewees. All of them were rather positive about the outcomes, however the interviewees from the community representatives usually preferred not having to negotiate CBAs again due to its length and intensity of the negotiation process. The interviewees from the city council stated more or less the same, and the developers were unilateral positive, regardless of the intensity and length it takes. However, almost every interviewee stated that CBAs are well established in southern California, some even emphasize it is rapidly becoming a standard in big multi-building, multi-phase development projects in California. What is also striking is that the persons from two community organizations that were interviewed (XXXX and LAANE), have different opinions, which is probably caused by their different niches. Xxx Xxxxxx of XXXX stated they would prefer strong and really good policies, so they can focus on other needs in the community, and not have to fight project by project by project. They want good policies to govern much broader swaps of areas. One concern of Donlin is that developers and businesses also use them for their own purposes. That is becoming more likely and perhaps more common, when a developer expects some community opposition, so they will just call it cost of doing business when the agreement will stay below $20 million dollars. Developers can use it as a PR opportunity and can use it for their own purposes, but the concern is that you are not actually addressing real community concerns in that process. That is a real risk (interview Donlin, 2013). However Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx of XXXXX said the reason they do organizing is: […] to achieve progressive results, to achieve better wages, affordable housing and more community involvement; to achieve a range of goals. To the extent that the city is now doing a better job of doing that, and that developers now recognize they got to start from that place, I think that is a great step. Instead of spending 1,5 year to negotiate, here you will have the city and the developer consult with some community groups to get you to 90% of that, but you do not have to do all that work and our attention, doing a lot of other things (Interview Donlin, 2013). So although they both agree better policy is needed, Xxx Xxxxxx is afraid the CBAs will be misused by developers. The fact that AEG used a Community Benefits Agreements for the second development in the LA Live area, a...
