Local hiring strategies require developers who benefit from public money to reserve a percentage of jobs for local residents.  This ensures that un- or under-employed residents in economically isolated communities benefit from economic development and reinvestment happening in their community, and promotes balance within a region's employment opportunities.

For many decades, U.S. development patterns have been characterized by the movement of jobs, resources, and opportunities out of urban centers and into the suburbs.  For residents who did not or were not able to move to the suburbs themselves, a range of barriers, including poor transportation and discriminatory hiring practices, has limited access to new suburban jobs.  Urban neighborhoods have been left with unsustainably high levels of unemployment.  Even those urban residents who do find work are often employed on a part-time basis with insufficient benefits to support their families. 

Today, depressed urban areas across the country are implementing redevelopment plans, often with the specific goal of increasing employment opportunity by creating new jobs.  Unfortunately, those jobs, and therefore much of the money intended to revitalize these neighborhoods, frequently elude those who most need it.

This tool examines two different local hiring strategies:

• City/County Ordinances are pieces of legislation that affect all publicly funded projects in the target area that are above certain thresholds.
• Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) are typically the outcome of negotiations between community groups and a developer.  They apply to one specific development, and are designed and implemented independently from government regulatory bodies.

There is significant overlap in the design, application, and challenges of these two strategies, as well as some key differences, but their goal is the same: to tie economic development to local opportunities for training and employment.

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