The Biden Administration’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) represents a generational opportunity to make a significant impact on vulnerable and marginalized communities. The legislation could help address some of our biggest problems, like lack of affordable housing, underemployment, systemic racism, unequal access to education and healthcare, and increased exposure to environmental hazards.
Almost $220 billion in IIJA funds were allocated by May 2023 to state, local, and tribal governments. The Biden administration, Congress, and a number of governors have linked much of the funding to equity in hopes of lifting up long-underserved communities.
But allocation is not the same as deployment. Despite provisions in the original bill meant to speed the allocation and delivery of funds, community members will not experience tangible results for years.
Further, the country is on the verge of another divisive presidential election, the result of which could jeopardize the equitable distribution of IIJA funds. That means delivering speedy and impactful results is only going to become more crucial—and more difficult.
Progress Moves at the Speed of Trust
The IIJA itself puts a premium on equity but offers little guidance on achieving it. It’s up to the states, localities, and developers. But they don’t have to do it alone or re-invent their approach for every new project.
Hyperlocal Research
Every project should begin with a deep dive into a target community. Who are its residents? Why do they live there? What are their social, economic, cultural, and racial backgrounds, and how do these identities intersect and interact?
Understanding a community’s makeup, history and complexity empowers stakeholders to make sound decisions about a project plan, like where to build an affordable housing complex or how to redevelop a highway that decades ago divided communities. It also informs the guarantees and incentives needed to ensure equitable deployment, like the fair distribution of construction jobs. Even after the initial planning of a project, managers can continue leveraging the research. It can, for example, help with communication around addressing the community’s concerns and help mitigate problems before they blow up. It’s the difference between a proactive strategic communications plan that can build trust in communities rather than crisis communications. Once a project reaches the level of crisis communications, it’s hard to come back from it.
Narrative Alignment
Rather than celebrating an abstract goal, project leaders need to demonstrate how a project addresses deep-rooted problems.
Consider a project that aims to provide broadband access for everyone in an economically vulnerable neighborhood or municipality—a worthy, inclusive project. But it may not be enough to simply promise that the service is forthcoming. What is the service good for? How does it address the wants and needs of community members? If this community has high unemployment or lacks healthcare, communicate how the promised internet service can provide access to job opportunities or telehealth solutions.
Bring Planning Down to Earth—Managers often struggle with whether to develop a project plan based on initial community input or bring a more fully developed plan to the community to elicit feedback. The first approach may take a little longer but will help build community trust and develop hyper-local stakeholders who can help move a project along within the community. . At a time when communities are more activated, the latter approach can create resistance because a project appears to have been delivered from “on high” with little community input. A token public hearing or two does little to reverse traditional mistrust of government and private developers in communities that too often have heard a slew of promises only to see them die on the vine or fail to deliver on initial promises.
Communities must be included throughout the process, from proposal to groundbreaking to ribbon cutting. That engagement is particularly important for projects that can take multiple years, which can bring new concerns and opposition as communities change new issues arise. It’s not a question of whether to engage; it’s a question of how and how often.
Push Back on Pushback
Inclusive and equitable project planning and execution will have detractors, including some in the political and business realms.. But the overall benefits of a hyper-local approach far outweigh any short-term negatives. It is these underserved communities, after all, that the IIJA is intended to serve and lift up.
Instead of pushing back against detractors, project stakeholders, and managers need to speak their language without sacrificing commitments to underserved populations. They should emphasize that “buying in” to equitable and inclusive projects is a long-term investment meant to correct deep-rooted, generational issues—but one that will pay off handsomely for businesses that stand by the communities they call home.
And most of all, they should emphasize that there’s no tradeoff between social responsibility and excellence. As Maryland Gov. Wes Moore remarked earlier this year, “Making sure that you are prioritizing equity does not mean that you are compromising excellence. You can and you should do both.”
Equity is not a philanthropic exercise, it is a business imperative.
The X-Factor
In the end, an aggressive and inclusive hyperlocal engagement strategy allows communities to enjoy the benefits of government project spending as quickly as possible. It’s a lesson too many still ignore. There are unfortunately a slew of examples of how avoiding serious, not perfunctory, conversations with the community can stall, or even kill, big projects, including:
- The New Mexico United Stadium, which faced community uproar decrying the project as part of Albuquerque’s history of systemic racist planning and zoning. A $50 billion bond initiative to help pay for the stadium failed, as a result, and the project had to be moved.
- The Obama Presidential Library in the former president’s home area took six years because of protests against gentrification before ground was broken. The community was not properly engaged until late in the process, causing massive delays.
- Amazon’s failed plan to build a second headquarters in Long Island City following protests over unfair tax incentives, housing, and gentrification Neither Amazon nor its government supporters properly engaged the impacted community.
Each of these examples—there are many, many more—represents a failure to establish trust in local communities. These holdups are so common that they’re often considered baked into the costs of attempting any major capital deployment.
But erosion of public trust that all too often in underserved communities is already low is not necessary or inevitable. It doesn’t have to remain an unpredictable “x-factor” that can delay or even tank the most promising and well-considered projects. In fact, stakeholders can and should engage deep within local communities—targeting key hyper-local influencers and not just the politicians and top-level community organizations--from start to finish in positive, powerful ways that ensure project funding can be deployed as quickly and efficiently as possible while ensuring that local constituents receive the benefits that they have so often been denied.
Building meaningful and lasting trust not only impacts individual projects, but future ones as well if communities feel more comfortable that they are being dealt with on an equitable and honest level. It can’t just be talk. The old playbook must be rewritten and now is the time with so much funding at stake.
Ken Lovett is a Partner at Ichor Strategies and leads the firm's Government Practice. He is a former Senior Advisor to the Chair and CEO of the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest public mass transit system in North America. He is also an award-winning former journalist and communications expert with the New York Daily News and the New York Post. He is based in Albany.
Ahmed Karrar is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Ichor Strategies. He is an advocacy and public affairs professional who has wide-ranging experience working in the civic engagement and nonprofit sectors. He is based in Chicago.
Aman Folami Reese is a Senior Associate at Ichor Strategies. He has a background in statistical and public health research methodologies and is passionate about using data to advance equity and uplift communities. He is based in Chicago.
