Good Neighbour Agreements - Are you a bad neighbour without one?

Good Neighbour Agreements build bridges within and between neighbours and neighbourhood organizations - Photo: The Forth Road Bridge (Scotland),
Creative Commons License, Eugene Obrien

By Larry Leach, 

Larry is Executive Director of Calgary’s 12 Community Safety Initiative – a non-profit crime prevention collaborative. He was awarded the Queens Diamond and Platinum Jubilee medals for his contributions to community-building. He is a member of the SafeGrowth Network.  

Are you thinking of starting a Good Neighbour Agreement? Have you heard that such agreements are uncomfortable and daunting? If so, there are some important things to consider, the most important being: Who do you want deciding your neighbourhood narrative?

I have been pondering the question of Good Neighbour Agreements (GNA) for a few months after a nonprofit housing leader said they didn’t like GNAs because they assume you are a bad neighbour. After pondering that idea, I decided to dig into this topic, especially why organizations and neighbourhoods should walk into these discussions with a more open mind.

WHY BOTHER WITH GNAs?

Having been on the executive of a Community Association for 10 years, I was hyper-aware of what my colleagues were facing in their neighbourhoods. Headlines like “community fights back” were the norm when I began in the association. Often these issues became a political hot potato turning into the “NIMBY” mantra (Not In My Backyard). With this narrative, almost every question or concern, legitimate or otherwise, is shot down as NIMBY. 

GNA's take time and patience to negotiate. There are some decent templates.

While NIMBY concerns do have some merit (some residents just don’t want things in their neighbourhood), there are legitimate concerns that don’t get addressed if you continually call them NIMBY. Last week’s blog on crime displacement discussed one issue with NIMBY.

In 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, my community experienced this issue firsthand. A nonprofit organization received funding to house some vulnerable people on 4 floors of a hotel in our neighbourhood. Our community Facebook page started seeing residents posting concerns – both legitimate and otherwise. Our community association executive reached out to our municipal councilor and a provincial politician. Neither one of these officials had any idea who to contact. 

GNAs can also be fun - or can create opportunities for pro-social engagement

FALSE NARRATIVES 

Meanwhile, stories surfaced on our Facebook page such as one claim from a cop describing 200 people housed at the hotel, that the hotel allowed visitors and drug use, and that visitors left hotel amenities all over the neighbourhood. Stories on Facebook gave the impression our community was under siege.

While the community association board was empathetic and supportive, they had little accurate information to combat this misinformation. After a couple months, the association was finally able to get accurate information (some of which was private). The association learned there were only 60 residents in the property and no visitors were allowed. Unfortunately, because it took months to clarify this information, residents were left to believe false FaceBook assertions. This is the first lesson of GNAs - if you don’t communicate your narrative, others will decide what it is.

While GNAs are typically about social interactions, they can also include new ideas for neighbourhood places and activities

Why do community nonprofits not want to engage with residents? Perhaps they want to avoid NIMBY? Dealing with NIMBYers is a concern, but there are some legitimate questions that remain unaddressed when you let NIMBY keep you away from such dialogue. It is important to hear from everyone, weigh through all the concerns, and then obtain accurate information before issues can be dealt with in a calm productive manner. 

THE VALUE OF THE GNA

This is the value of a good neighbour agreement. There are a number of official templates for constructing GNAs, but here are some practical tips.

A GNA can be negotiated by one or two leaders from the community and one or two from the agency. You don’t need a large public meeting to get things rolling. Here are some key elements to a good agreement:

1. Spell out the activities of each of the groups. Describe “this is what we do”. Sometimes people assume an agency does something that they don’t do. Spell out the activities and the mission of the Community Association. Some agencies don’t always understand how they are structured. Both assumptions can lead to confusion and conflict. The GNA is a living document that adapts with the changes in scope of each participant.
2. Communication. Describe how and when are we going to communicate and to whom? Will Agency A will come to Community B’s meetings, once a month, quarterly or twice per year. How is written communication done? Via e-mail, between Executive Director and President? Is there a social media strategy as well? Perhaps a yearly Barbeque? Build the structure around the relationship.
3. Who to call? Who do residents or agency users call with concerns? Dig deeper into the types of concerns as to which people to call. If it’s an illegal activity, the Police are likely to be the call. If it’s a minor dispute or nuisance, it may involve bylaw (or ordinance) officials (unkept property or noise). Call the agency to discuss before calling bylaw officials. Being a good neighbour is a 2-way street. If the relationship strengthens, more trust can be developed.
4. Spell out what happens with an unresolved dispute? Is it mediated? How long does it take? Who does the mediation? 

 

There are many advantages to well-established GNAs - better dispute resolution, controlling your own narrative, and social harmony 

IS IT WORTH IT? 

You might still be saying that this sounds like a document for two groups that don’t trust one another? It is actually an invitation and opportunity for an agency to put forward clear information about their activities and take the power away from NIMBYers and those who will decide how you operate without looking at the facts. 

The GNA helps put the rumours aside and offers some talking points based on facts – and that can be extremely helpful to support the work of neighbourhood associations. This is the starting point for a good neighbourly relationship.

There is another advantage to a GNA – consider what happens when people change positions. Putting some terms of reference in writing for all current and future decision-makers can make for smoother transitions. It can show the willingness of different groups to engage each other in a respectful manner for many years to come. That alone is a powerful incentive for GBAs. They are the key to great relationships with those who live and work in neighbourhoods. As we assert in SafeGrowth, all residents deserve to live in a safe and vibrant place.  

Displacement and the NIMBY wars

Downtown skyline, Madison, Wisconsin - site of our latest SafeGrowth training
- photo courtesy of Wiki Creative Commons

You always seemed so sure
That one day we'd be fighting

In a suburban war

Your part of town against mine

by Gregory Saville 

The rock group Arcade Fire wrote those lyrics about the alienation and gentrification in cities in their Grammy-winning song “The Suburbs”. It's a theme that arose several times in our SafeGrowth trainings in different cities this year, particularly as it pertains to the risk of displacing the troubles, disorder, homelessness, and crime in one neighborhood to others around the city. 

Displacement has shown up in this blog over the years including how gentrification displaces the poor, or how Melbourne, Australia positively displaced graffiti into a successful industry called street art tours.

MADISON

We spent time last week teaching in the beautiful city of Madison, Wisconsin. We were delighted by the dedication of members of very engaged police and planning departments, community members, business downtown advocates, and others. They chose their sites for projects and are now digging into their work to improve livability and safety. 

As in so many other cities we’ve visited over the past year, homelessness rose to the surface. We remind our students to keep an eye out for problems with crime displacement – moving problems from one area to another. They must not trigger fights between one part of town against another.

It is the same in other cities like Vancouver, Saskatoon, and Palm Springs where SafeGrowth teams identify homelessness as a major concern. Of course, homelessness, while troubling and tragic, is not a crime. Yet displacing people on the street from one place to another happens over and over and one neighborhood ends up fighting a war against another in another part of town. These NIMBY wars – Not-In-My-Back Yard – tarnish everyone and starts needless political wars. 

Architect Oscar Newman was among the first to describe the concept of crime displacement in his 1972 book Defensible Space - photo Livingston Press

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

The research article most commonly cited to describe crime displacement originally appeared in 1976. It was written by one of the original researchers from the first-ever evaluation of CPTED – the Westinghouse Studies. CPTED of that era was based on the work of architect Oscar Newman, among others, and his book on Defensible Space. 

However, it was in Newman's book where you will find the original deep dive into crime displacement. Newman spent years studying crime and prevention in New York public housing and he claims that it was Police Captain Arnold Berkman who tracked crime around the properties, including when it displaced. 

“As a vigorous police effort is concentrated in one project, criminals respond by moving into adjacent projects. Displacement, however, is seldom a full 100 percent.” (page 205). 

It is unclear from Newman’s book exactly how he and Captain Berkman traced displacement accurately enough to conclude that 100% displacement was rare. Subsequent research does seem to confirm that this is the case. 

Or does it? 

New research uncovered a different story - some of the first empirical examples of malign, negative crime displacement.

Movement around cities happens in many ways - trains, walkways, and roads. But other things move around cities, such as crime. This is the concept of crime displacement.

We advise those in our classes and in our projects that, when it comes to displacement, take nothing for granted. To the best of your ability, plan for the worst as well as the best. As in all types of neighborhood safety planning, include everyone potentially affected by displacement.  The question of displacement remains very much open.

Newman's conclusion from 50 years ago applies as much today: 

“There are serious moral implications to the question of displacement, and they are not as easily dismissed... The full extent of the displacement problem is yet to be understood and a means for coping with it developed.” (Page 206)