Eligibility and Accessibility in Supplier Diversity Programs and Opportunities
This month’s Changemakers LA podcast episode is hosted by LISC LA’s Deputy Director Miranda Rodriguez and Senior Program Officer Alexandra Dawson. It covers eligibility and accessibility in supplier diversity programs and opportunities in the City of Los Angeles. Each guest provides unique insights on the importance of building infrastructure, resources, and pipelines that improve economic mobility through contract & procurement opportunities for impacted entities they serve and partner with.
Joining LISC LA for this conversation are:
- Fred Jackson, City of Los Angeles, Economic Workforce and Development Department (EWDD), Assistant General Manager
- Eletrice Harris, Southern California Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SoCalNOMA), Summer Camp Director and the SoCal Student Chapter Liaison
- Howard Baum, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), Deputy General Counsel
This episode began by discussing how stakeholders across industries can collaborate to address the disproportionate experiences of overcrowded housing, lack of access to capital, and low percentage of procurement dollars going to impacted businesses. Each guest is pioneering supplier diversity initiatives to facilitate measurable and equitable outcomes in challenging industries like workforce development, affordable housing development, and architecture.
Eletrice Harris provided insight on how SoCal NOMA uses its DEI challenge to support firms, corporate brands, municipalities, and other industries in creating measurable impact in their equity intentions. The challenge's intent aims to operationalize the pledge that everyone seemed to have been making after the murder of George Floyd. The challenge allowed SoCal NOMA to assess people's commitments across the industry and develop ten actionable items to implement immediately.
Fred Jackson discussed the City of Los Angeles' programs and services like their Regional Alliance for Marketplace Procurement (RAMP) platform, which is improving equity outcomes in the contracts and procurement system. In addition, he discussed the city's role in the larger supplier diversity ecosystem and landscape related to supporting diverse constituency stakeholders, businesses, vendors, and other traditionally underrepresented and underserved companies.
Howard Baum highlighted the challenges around eligibility in accessing contracts with government agencies and the partnerships and programs developed by the Los Angeles Housing Authority to bridge the gap between eligibility and opportunity for development projects.
About our panel:
Howard Baum is Deputy General Counsel for the Housing Authority of the City of Angels (HACLA), who also sits on the Board of Directors of the Housing and Development Law Institute (HDLI). Howard is a life-long Angelino. He oversees all HACLA contracting and procurement operations totaling over 46 million dollars annually. His responsibilities include supervision of HACLA's award-winning Section 3 Program and related "Let's Get to Work!" campaign and small business campaign titled" We're Open for Business!". Both of these programs were recipients of the NAHRO National Awards of Merit. In addition, his procurement operations are recognized by the U.S. Communities (now Omnia Partners) for innovation in procurement practices.
Eletrice Harris is a proud native Chicagoan with high energy, enthusiasm, and passion for mentoring design students and teaching Architecture. Eletrice is an experienced Project Manager, Administrator, and Architect with more than 20 years of experience who has a true passion for developing young minority students interested in architecture and architectural students. Eletrice is the Southern California NOMA Chapter Summer Camp Director and the SoCal Student Chapter Liaison. Eletrice dedicates her time and talent to ensure that every middle school student through grad school knows about, can pursue, and excel in the field of Architecture.
Frederick Jackson is Assistant General Manager of Economic Development Economic & Workforce Development Department for the City of Los Angeles. Fred is a Southern California native who has focused on real estate planning and development throughout his career. His 25 years in the industry bring experience in comprehensive urban planning, economic development, redevelopment, and residential and commercial development. Fred is a member of the Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association, and Congress for New Urbanism, and he is a former Commissioner on the South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission.
Want to dive into the full transcript? Check it out below!
Miranda Rodriguez 00:02
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of The Changemakers LA Podcast. Presented by LISC LA. The Changemaker LA Podcast is a tribute to the people and the policies that make LA neighborhoods good places to live, work, and play. I’m Miranda Rodriguez, Deputy Director, here with my co-host Alex Dawson, Senior Program Officer for LISC LA. In today's episode we’ll be talking about the importance of supporting capacity building programs for diverse small businesses to ensure that we have a pipeline of contract ready local businesses for upcoming public and private contracting opportunities.
Miranda Rodriguez 00:39
Joining us today we have three guests. First is Howard Baum, Deputy General Counsel for the Housing Authority of the City of LA. Who also sits on the board of directors of the housing and Development Lot Institute. Howard is a lifelong Angelino, he currently oversees all HACLA Contracting and Procurement operations totalling over 46 million dollars annually. His responsibilities include supervision of HACLA’S award-winning section 3 program, and related “Let's Get to Work” campaign, and small business campaign titled “We’re open for business”. Both of these programs were recipients of the Narrow National Awards of Merit and his procurement operations has been recognized by the U.S. Communities for Innovation and Procurement Practices.
Welcome Howard.
Alexandra Dawson 01:33
Also here we have Eletrice Harris, a proud native Chicagoian, with high energy, enthusiasm, and passion for mentoring design students and teaching architecture. A is an experienced project manager, administrator, and architect with more than 20 years of experience. Who has a true passion for developing young minority students interested in architecture and architecture students. A is a Southern California NOMA Summer Camp Director and the SoCal student chapter liaison. She dedicated her time and talent to ensure that every middle school student through grad school
Alexandra Dawson 02:05
She dedicated spare time and talent, to ensure that every middle school student through Grad school knows about, can pursue, and excel in the field of architecture.
Alexandra Dawson 02:28
And last but certainly not least, we have Fred Jackson, who currently works as the Assistant General Manager of Economic Development and Workforce Development Department for the city of Los Angeles. Fred is a southern California native who has focused on real estate planning and development throughout his Career. His 25 years in the industry bring experience and comprehensive urban planning, economic development, redevelopment and residential and commercial development. Fred is a member of the Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association, and Congress for new urbanism and he's a former Commissioner on the South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission. Welcome Fred. Welcome Eletrice. And we look forward to the conversation.
Fred Jackson 03:01
Thank you.
Miranda Rodriguez 03:03
Alright, so our guests today are all in some way, shape or form taking an equity approach to how they procure. And contract and affordable housing and infrastructure and other major industries.
These change makers are leading the charge to facilitate economic mobility for residents and small businesses that are often left out of large supply chain and procurement opportunities.
So, to get just a sense of scale and the impact that these efforts can have, the city of LA itself currently spends more than $10 billion and over 500,000 transactions annually, and we anticipate money from the 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill to trickle down to our state and local governments, so through targeted and attentional supplier diversity programs policies and resources we know that we have an incredible opportunity to ensure that those dollars benefit diverse small businesses and disadvantaged communities throughout the county.
Alexandra Dawson 04:12
Moreover, as we grapple with the disproportionate impact Covid 19 has had on businesses and residents’ access to resources and services.We must talk about how we can work in collaboration to address the disproportionate experiences of overcrowded housing, lack of access to capital and low percentage of procurement dollars going to impacted Businesses. Our guests are pioneering new approaches to facilitate measurable and equitable outcomes in our challenging industries. Now let's dig in and talk a little bit more about what you all are doing to support equity outcomes and supplier diversity in each of your areas of expertise.
Alexandra Dawson 04:48
We're going to start with a question for Eletrice, DEI is a very popular topic of discussion right now. Many corporate brands and municipalities have outlined commitments, but some have challenges, creating measurable impact.
Alexandra Dawson 05:03
So Cal NOMA’s DEI challenge works with construction firms, architectural firms, and agencies to operationalize these intentions. Can you tell us more about So Cal NOMA’s DEI challenge and the qualitative and quantitative outcomes that it aims to achieve.
Eletrice Harris 05:24
Yes, we launched our DEI challenge program immediately after George Floyd's whole situation. What happened in the industry: architecture, engineering, and Construction and with the architectural schools and people in general, people were declaring their solidarity to diversity, equity and inclusion. And they were making these broad statements and posting them everywhere, and no one was really taking any action, so we decided to launch our challenge which went beyond the pledge that everyone seemed to have been making
so all across the industry, people were pledging their support to do better and be more equitable and and to come up with ways to diversify our profession, but they weren't taking any action, so what our DEI challenge was to take all of the pledges that people were making across the industry and to present them with some actionable items that they can literally do immediately, so we came up with 10 items That people firms organizations could really dive into, and they were really simple things but that helped them to really evaluate where they were and how they would move forward.
We came up with these 10 action items, we put the challenge out, we first asked them to pledge, and once they did they went and did some introspection. We have a series of surveys that they took within their own industry or firm or organization and they looked at their demographics, their actions, and they were able to get points for each one of the 10 actions that we have and once they did their intake documentation and they saw where they were, some were extremely alarmed and others were actually doing a great job with implementing some programs that they already had in place, and we took them through a series of sessions that presented them with ways in which they can make these changes. And we have been going strong for the past two years and we're on our third DEI challenge cohorts and these firms are making a tremendous difference in our industry, and we feel like it's because of the Quantitative introspection that they are required to do every year,they need to assess themselves, and then we take their assessment of themselves and pair that with their peers and we come out with the report each year that helps them see where they are on the bar of being diverse, equity, and inclusive.
Miranda Rodriguez 08:36
And are those results published somewhere online that we could share with folks after this call?
Eletrice Harris 08:43
They are not online at this time, we are we're just finishing our second year, and the first year we decided only to share it with the actual cohorts who had participated, but at the end of this round, we are going to publicly share them on our website and it will be available for you to use and to see. One, who these firms are who are really taking steps and their score, we're basically scoring on how diverse, equitable and inclusive, they are in the industry.
Miranda Rodriguez 09:17
Yeah and I think these assessments would be great models for other people who are interested in running similar programs.
Eletrice Harris 09:25
We then launched the same program with our architecture schools, because the students actually asked us to do it, and we actually have a sister DEI challenge for colleges and universities.
Miranda Rodriguez 09:39
Thank you. Fred, this next question is for you. We know that the city has been doing a lot to improve access to city contracts and the overall sustainability of micro enterprises and small businesses within LA. This includes the launch of the very exciting new ramp platform and some Technical Assistant, another incubator programs that you guys are rolling out to increase small business capacity and eligibility for contracting. So why is infrastructure, like the city's ramp platform,important to improving equity outcomes in the contracts in procurement system and what role do you think this is helping the city play in the larger supplier diversity ecosystem or landscape.
Fred Jackson 10:25
Well, thanks Miranda and Alex for this opportunity, yes, the regional alliance marketplace for procurement RAMP. Similar platforms are extremely important and necessary to improving and providing equitable access, as well as opportunities to a diverse constituency of stakeholders, businesses, vendors, and other companies that have traditionally been underrepresented and underserved. And so diverse owned businesses often face hurdles that other companies do not, including access to capital, the ability to network, systemic prejudices and other issues and so it's incumbent upon the city to support supplier diversity, because it's the right thing to do.These businesses contribute to the economic vitality of the city and they should participate in receiving contracts and dollars that the city disseminates. Most diverse businesses are small and offering them contracts and business opportunities allow them to grow and compete better in the marketplace. Also, when the city buys or contracts with a diverse business, it allows them to support current jobs, to create new jobs, increase their wages, and pay more in tax revenue which benefits our local neighborhood and communities.
Miranda Rodriguez 11:51
And I know that the regional marketplace is also supposed to work with other large Prime contractors and eventually Maybe other municipalities to aggregate opportunities and be able to push that out to the small business community. So wondering, you know why you guys designed it that way, and what role the city is playing in that larger ecosystem, to support supplier diversity.
Fred Jackson 12:18
Well you know, it's southern California, Los Angeles, is the big fish in the sea here, but there are a number of cities and municipalities and entities, you know there's metro, the county, HACLA and others right, who are major contractors and provide substantial amount of dollars in the region, and so it only makes sense that we collaborate instead of competing with one another and build upon some, use some of the existing infrastructure that's in place to benefit all of us right and so that's been kind of the impetus behind RAMP.
Miranda Rodriguez 13:06
Okay, and shout out to your RAMP team who blasted out that we have a send LA program, it's a supplier diversity program and it got sent out through the ramp platform and we saw our applications double so you know it works.
Alexandra Dawson 13:22
I saw that it was so exciting to see that. Well, Howard, let's get you in the mix. Eligibility is a major challenge to accessing contracts with government agencies. What partnerships or programs might exist or are being developed to bridge the gap between eligibility and opportunity for HACLA’s affordable housing projects.
Howard Baum 13:45
And let me start by saying thank you for the invitation. I appreciate being here today, particularly among these colleagues, it's a real privilege. I think it really starts and I'm going to break this up into two parts. It starts with partnerships, and then we can talk a little bit more about eligibility because they're both really important components here. I will say, along the lines of partnerships it starts with visibility. Understanding what kind of contracting opportunities are out there you do that through partners. You do that through other means, we think that RAMP is terrific. Fred big nod to you because we think this is an essential component of our procurement as we move forward to increase diversity and outreach to vendors that might not otherwise be aware of our contracting opportunities, so we're really in favor of that. With respect to partnerships again it's essential to bring awareness to contracting opportunities that exist at HACLA and elsewhere, and so ramp helps do that. But it's also important to eliminate barriers to contracting right, and this is another component of it. We build awareness, with every procurement we do we, of course, will advertise on ramp formerly LA Bob and we will also notify over 40 different organizations that we recognize, and help facilitate minority contracting and whether that's the SBA, whether that's the Hispanic or Black Chambers of Commerce, whether it's the Women's Business Association LA, Valley Economic Development Center, Slate Z you name it we really do a pretty broad blast about what we're doing.
Howard Baum 15:20
But then it's the partnerships themselves so training and getting the word out there about how you do business with us and how you understand what the impediments might be, is really critical to us and so. Pre pandemic, and I say pre pandemic, because it makes a big difference for us. The three years before that we probably did 40 different events, with the city, with the county, with others, with the SBA, with the Department of Labor, with HUD, you name it we were out there, doing not just events but trainings and different kinds of things to help folks understand what it meant to do business with public agencies and we felt that was a really good exercise, and unfortunately pandemic slowed things a little, but we see things getting brighter and better for us so in 2021, for example, and I want to keep myself honest here this my staff would be angry if I didn't. We held some events, together with HUD, with slate Z, with the Valley Economic Development Corporation, with the Watts Rising Small Business Summit.
Howard Baum 16:20
And these again we're advanced where folks could understand how you do business with us, how you register with us as a vendor, we have an individual dedicated to that, so if somebody is struggling on our website we're going to help you do that. In terms of partnerships, there's a lot to be said for them and they're critically important here. I mentioned some of the agencies we’re working with. Another one that we work with very closely as actually affiliated with the city it's Merriwether & Williams, who provides insurance and bonding assistance to small businesses that might not otherwise have the capacity. And that kind of goes to the second part of this, which is eligibility, it is a major impediment being eligible to contract with a public agency. And what's really important for folks to understand here is when we're talking about developing affordable housing, improving it, rehabilitating it, maintaining it, whatever we want to call it, all of those activities are public works activities and that's a really important thing for your viewers and listeners to understand. because it's a public works activity, that means that those vendors have to be registered with the state. It means that when they bid on projects, they have to post bid bonds if they're awarded the work they have to post performance bonds and payment bonds, etc. And these are things that may be new to them that they don't have to do in the private sector so even those who are well qualified and experienced who want to make that transition, find themselves sort of facing all these different barriers and things they may not be familiar with, and so it's really important that we help them understand what those barriers are, and that is the purpose of many of the trainings that we've been doing in partnership with others.
Alexandra Dawson 18:05
Thanks Howard. So, opening up access to affordable housing contracting
opportunities are a really powerful way to drive for racial and economic justice. Billions are invested in affordable housing each year and in 2020 alone projects that received a low income housing tax credit allocation cost upwards of $12 billion to develop. At LISC LA, we've introduced a legislative concept that will help us better understand how investment, and light tech projects trickle down to diverse lead contractors and firms. AB 2873 sponsored by Assemblymember Reggie Jones Sawyer will require that developers share data on supplier and contractor demographics. This data would be reported annually by T kak and ultimately, we want to use this data to create DEI goals that will lead to wealth building opportunities for communities typically excluded from them.
Alexandra Dawson 19:03
So I have a question for all of you, or for anyone who wants to tackle it. Studying targeted race and gender outcomes and impact goals can be a challenge given legislative barriers like state proposition 209. Which prohibits the state local governments, districts public universities, and schools from discriminating against or giving preferential treatment to any individual or group in public employment, Public education, or public contracting on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, how are your agencies working within this policy landscape, while addressing supplier diversity needs and are there other metrics or impact indicators you're evaluating.
Fred Jackson 19:57
Not and all at one time right. For the city and with the economic and workforce development department with our grants and programs that we have launched. We weigh areas that are low moderate income, we give preference and weigh those applications higher. There is a CAL ENBIRO? a cow enviro screen platform which; scales and rates, the amount of pollution and, as we all come to know, environmental justice and areas that have higher pollution rates tend to be those areas that are poor, which tend to be those areas also that are communities of color. we're able to kind of skew and give preference to those areas that are predominant by and have not received a significant amount of investment over the years and so that's how we'd tailored some of our programs to target areas that traditionally have been wiped out.
Alexandra Dawson 21:22
Anyone else, want to jump in on that one.
Howard Baum 21:28
I mean I'll just add the observation that I fundamentally believe that small, minority, diverse businesses can compete very effectively if you eliminate barriers to entry. Fundamentally I believe it, I've seen it over and over again, and hope that we get a chance and perhaps some of these follow up questions to talk a little bit more about specific actions that we're taking to help in that respect.
Eletrice Harris 21:55
Well, what we're doing in the architecture, construction and interiors engineering industry is that we are working with the Community development boards in minority communities. A lot of them have been forming these boards, organizations, and nonprofits to oversee things that are being built in their neighborhood, and what we have been doing is reaching out to these boards and making sure that they know that they have the power to ask these contractors and especially developers, who are developing these buildings in their neighborhoods about their equity inclusion and to make a really big deal about it. And so we have set up programs, where we go to these meetings, we talk to them, we give them actionable items that they can ask, we send them to the City Council Meetings,or planning meetings to talk about what's going on in their neighborhood and lay out their demands. We can’t, because of prop 209 we can't mutually say that these contractors need to do that or developers need to include minorities and small owned businesses in their projects, but the neighborhoods can raise enough awareness and let them know that they are requiring this for them to continue to build in their neighborhoods and that has been the route we have been taking.
Alexandra Dawson 23:32
Thank you for touching on that Community engagement piece and really involving neighborhoods and decision making power. Howard, somewhat following up on the comment yoU previously made. What would you say is the biggest challenge and increasing supplier diversity outcomes in the affordable housing development and construction process?
Howard Baum 23:53
I touched on it already, it really goes back to the barriers to participation and they found a lot of different categories so, for example, there's a lack of understanding. How do you bid on anything as a public works type contract, where you have to have bonding in place and sometimes special insurance requirements. We do that through training and we do that through support, we, for example, have developed a website that is filled with information about, there was assemblers, I should say senate bill SBA 54 followed by 96 that was adopted back in 2015 that required all businesses that do public boards contracting to register with the state. A lot of vendors didn't know that so we tried to help their small businesses shepherd through that process. Gave them education on what to do, how to register, do's and don'ts, etc, and we continue to remind them annually because we didn't want to lose those businesses. They're critical to us, they support our neighborhoods. We've got 14 large public housing sites and we want to make sure that our economic activity supports the neighborhood's surrounding them, not just our housing sites themselves. Vendor registration.
Howard Baum 25:02
If you have language barriers or if you just need assistance we have folks who will pick up the phone and speak to you and get you registered, it's really important to you. something that is a little bit unusual is, if you do apply for contract and you don't get that award, we’ll provide you a debrief; we’ll walk you through the strengths and weaknesses of our proposal so that next time you bid you have a better opportunity, and in fact we've seen multiple examples where vendors have come back and won bids, the next time around, and so we're thrilled about that. There's a lack of capacity issues that are challenging for these vendors as well, and so we talked about bonding and insurance. One of the things that we've looked at, is where do we have the discretion under state and sometimes federal law to waive bonding requirements, or at least reduce those. Because a lot of small businesses don't have the capacity or they've never had to do this before so Merriwether & Williams, which again, through association with the city provides this kind of support they do a great job we've done joint presentations with them and they in fact have helped many vendors of our small vendors, I should say; not only get bonding capacity but increase it and ultimately be able to do contracts with us.
Howard Baum 26:13
Then there's something really important, which are financial constraints that are often forgotten about typically when you do business with a public entity and you provide your services and you submit your invoice you may not get paid for 120- 150 days. Businesses can't afford the carrying costs; they have to pay their employees, they have to buy the materials and supplies, so we've done something that I think is kind of innovative here at HACLA. We moved from net 90, 60, 3O to pay immediately, and what that means is this; if a vendor submits an invoice to us, it's going to get reviewed immediately to make sure, of course, that the work has been performed or the goods have been delivered, and that whatever they've provided and build out a line with the contract. But once they do that it gets processed for payment, so we can process payments in as little as a week, more frequently it's probably two weeks, but it's well under this you know 90 120 days that a lot of vendors are accustomed to, and have to live with, so we think that's really important.
Howard Baum 27:16
All of these sort of little pieces come together, I mean we try these things, but
we're more concerned about outcomes, then we are really with just sort of these inputs and thinking they're going to work we've talked to our vendors. One of the things that we also track is our MOBE and WOBE participation and for those who aren't familiar with the terms, WOBE is our women owned business or business own enterprise and MOBE is our minority owned business enterprise, and when we spend our federal dollars, we track what we're spending towards. With all of our contractors and particularly with respect to MOBE and WOBE and over the last four years we've averaged 40%. 40% of our contracts are going to MOBE, WOBE organizations. We're really proud of that number, we are still a work in progress and can always get better at what we do and will continue to do that, but. Again outcomes are what really matters here. We've got to be good listeners, we've got to really sit down with our vendors and understand what their constraints are so that we can do a better job.
Miranda Rodriguez 28:18
Two weeks that's pretty impressive. I don't even think the LISC can as a nonprofit gets our payments out that quickly, bravo to HACLA. So switching gears just a little bit, this question is for Electrice. So we know that you have a passion for working with BIPOC students that are interested in architecture from elementary school to high school and one of our previous episodes of the podcast was on the school to career pipeline and Joy Masha, guests on that episode discuss the importance of seeing the whole family in order to reach the child. And the example used was a family of five having one computer to work remotely during Covid-19. So for K through 12 students who may go to a school that doesn't have one of these kind of special architecture programs or are from a family that may think that you know career track is expensive or not even in their purview, how do you think we best expose students at this level to ensure there's a diverse pipeline of and career pathways in the industries of architecture and construction and engineering and what do you think are some ideal roles or stakeholders in this effort, thinking about how we can pull in our Community development partners to help support those.
Eletrice Harris 29:49
So this is a very interesting area, creating a pipeline and making sure that we include the minority community so what we do here at So Cal NOMA is we put on several workshops and a summer camp; year round workshops in the summer camp, that introduces middle school students and high school students to architecture in a way that is engaging and fun. But also because we have found minority students are not, as you have alluded to in this example even exposed to architecture as a career option, they haven't seen anybody in their Community that's an architect and their parents might not even comprehend exactly what we do so, exposing and promoting it is really not happening in our minority communities, and so what we did is took it upon ourselves to create an avenue and an opportunity for them to do that. We think this is very, very important, and our pipeline actually goes from middle school, all the way to licensure and practicing in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.
Eletrice Harris 31:08
The way we bring in stakeholders is, at each one of these stages is very important that students know, we take architecture, for instance, we are just the start of something being built. Meaning we design it, it then moves to the next modality, which is to engineer it, and after it's engineered, it has to be built. So we bring in the stakeholders of every part of the built environment and have them to share with the students how their part or their link in the chain of building a building and creating a Community. We also feel it is important that we bring in the entire community into this process, and so we give all stakeholders an opportunity to present how they affect the student. So, none of this will really matter to them unless they can see themselves in it, and so we focus on the student and making sure that they can see themselves on any part of or any link in the chain.
Alexandra Dawson 32:21
This is going to be the last question, each of you again, please do provide a response. But as you are organizing to address supplier diversity needs, what would you say are the largest capacity building needs for diverse small businesses and what do you think is the number one solution to address those needs.
Miranda Rodriguez 32:52
You only get one.
Howard Baum 33:00
So there's a lot to unpack with that question. I'll take a little piece of that. I'm sure my colleagues will pitch in as well. One of the things that we need to do with any kind of contracting is making things scalable. For entities. and what I mean by that is, if you have a job that's a significant scale job, a multimillion dollar job it may be that the small business can't participate in that procurement, they may not have the capacities that I talked about earlier. On the other hand, maybe they can serve as a subcontractor to a prime, or maybe those jobs can be broken up into smaller parts that lend themselves to procurement an opportunity, a contract opportunity for a smaller business. And so I know that's one of the things that we think about here at HACLA. We do push our developers and our redevelopment partners to do the same to engage small businesses, and we think that helps make a difference. It's something that is not always intuitive. People think oh scale and money saved we don't necessarily agree with that. Sometimes scale is monopoly power and not something that money saved, so we think that that is a really good tool and strategy for engaging more small businesses. That's where HACLA lives, our contracts are much more modest and size, most of them are well under a million dollars. When we go out for work, and so we kind of live in the proof small business space, if you will, and we're encouraging again our large scale developers to do something similar.
Eletrice Harris 34:35
You stole my one thing. For me, I think it's, i'm sorry it's a combo, is partner
ship and information because before prop 209, businesses entities were required to have a minority participation. Right, and now we don't have that. So I think partnerships and somehow finding a way for it to be a requirement to work with a small business, to seek out and find the opportunities within the procurement process or within their their bid or the process for them to have to use one of these small businesses, and I think it's on us, those that are putting these RFP’s out, to find a way to include that as some kind of a requirement that they would provide an opportunity, because that is what people are looking for the small businesses and how we might diversified the the supply line is just creating more opportunities and partnerships.
Fred Jackson 35:59
Yeah and just to add. To, Both what Howard and Eletrice mentioned, oftentimes the business, the service, and the products they're providing they got that down pack right it's all the other administrative aspects that a lot of the businesses need to shore up, for example, if you're going to do business in the city. You need to have a business tax registration certificate, so oftentimes, we will have these various programs, and we find that these entities don't have a BTRC. So that's the first thing right, in addition to that it's having your business plan, your financial documents, accounting documents, all of those documents which validates you as a business. Of course, the certifications also assist and help identify you for these prime and subprime contracting opportunities as well and so.
Fred Jackson 37:11
That's what we found that there've been a lot of businesses that apply for our grants and other programs, and they come to us and we have to deny them or put them on the shelf, to help them out. But that puts them down on the list, on those that we can assist, so we have to assist those first that we just to the sheer volume of entities are applying for our programs. All of the administrative stuff and I think within this is a shameless plug EWDD, we have 10 business source centers. Throughout the city those business source centers can assist in any business with all of their administrative paperwork, legal assistance, financial accounting assistance, which are bookkeeping and books and whatnot, in order to prepare you to propose and to present a proposal for us, and others. That's my add to this conversation is get your house in order, the administrative piece of it.
Howard Baum 38:22.950
If I might add one more comment, because Fred said something I think is really important, and for all your listeners here who are with public agencies. It's really important to look at contracting through the lens of contractors and understand that the city, for example, has its own ordinances, its own requirements, Fred touched on, so the county has others, HACLA it has its own, LAUSD has its own, College District has its own and so every time you apply, submit a bid, if you will, on a procurement, the requirements differ, and it can be pretty overwhelming. And we need to be sensitive to that, we need to slim it down, where we can, we need to provide opportunities to cure documents, at times, where it's curable or doesn't undermine the integrity of the procurement so, for example, we can't let you change your pricing twice. But we might let you submit that form you're missing because it's not consequential and those are the kinds of things that we can do. We need to have those kinds of sensitivities. They harm no one in fact they benefit everybody because they increase competition and they provide additional contracting opportunities.
Miranda Rodriguez 39:30
Great well thanks again to all of you guys for joining us today and sharing all the great work that you're doing within your agencies. We know that your insights are essential to understanding how we can better work together to open up supply chains and procurement opportunities to advance more equitable outcomes for communities throughout Los Angeles. So again, we appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing all the good work that you're doing out there in the world.
Eletrice Harris 40:01
Thank you.
Fred Jackson 40:02
Thank you.
Howard Baum 40:03
Yeah, thank you for having us.
Alexandra Dawson 40:06
This episode of Changemakers LA was made possible by our partner, California Community Foundation. If you'd like to learn more about how we support place based initiatives for housing and economic development at LISC LA, please visit us online at www.lisc.org/Los/Angeles and follow us on Twitter @LISCLA, you can find the rest of the series on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Subscribe to hear more conversations about the people and places that shape Los Angeles. This podcast was produced in collaboration with Growing Greatness Now, a consulting firm committed to social and environmental justice.
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