Jared Bravo thought he knew a few things about building a house. After all, he had helped his dad refinish their basement when he was a teenager and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture. But in reality, he knew very little.
Bravo, 25, works for Habitat for Humanity New York City in Queens, N.Y. As the construction site manager, he oversees the gut renovation of old city-owned housing units that are being turned into affordable housing for low-income families. He’s had to learn everything about building on the job.
“The more I’ve been onsite, the more I realized I didn’t actually do much to help fix my dad’s basement,” he jokes.
Though Bravo hadn’t intended to go into construction, the opportunity to learn a trade skill was something that, to him, proved valuable.
That understanding is lost on many young Americans, as a so-called “skills gap” looms over the construction and manufacturing industries that could hamper output over the next decade. After the 2008 housing bust, almost 22 percent of the construction force left for other jobs, leaving 900,000 positions open. Today, the outlook remains bleak. Seventy-seven percent of builders report framing crew shortages and 76 percent say that there aren’t enough carpenters, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
The lack of builders is particularly acute after this year’s hurricane season decimated 25 percent of the Florida Keys and destroyed an estimated 30,000 homes in Houston; Puerto Rico is still reeling from Hurricane Irma’s destruction.
There simply aren’t enough people to help rebuild.
An October 2017 poll conducted by the staffing firm Adecco shows that close to 90 percent of American executives believe apprenticeship programs, which tend to enjoy wide bipartisan support, can close this gap. In 2016, President Obama allocated $265 million in grants for apprenticeship programs through 2019. More recently, President Trump funneled an additional $100 million into those efforts — a move that will likely experience funding struggles as a result of the president’s cuts to educational programs and a 21 percent decrease in funding to the Labor Department.
Nonprofits and local governments also run apprenticeship programs that achieve the same goal for less within the “new-collar” job sector (a term coined by the New York Times), while trade schools are also affordable options.
The worker shortage is already causing construction delays. In the Big Apple, for example, Habitat for Humanity New York City acts as a general contractor building affordable housing units. It’s had to stretch deadlines because skilled carpenters and other tradespeople weren’t available.
But it hasn’t been all bad news for Habitat — or other groups, like YouthBuild — that work to create a pipeline of workers.
“The upside is that we’re returning and providing roads for people in the community to become laborers or construction workers that may not have realized this was an option,” says Karen Haycox, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City.
Robert Taylor, executive director for New York’s East Harlem chapter of YouthBuild, echoes these sentiments. “Not every person who comes into our program is going to be equipped to take on tech jobs that require a four-year college education, especially if you’re already reading at the fourth- or sixth-grade level … If you’re someone coming from somewhere where you’re not finishing high school, construction jobs are great to be placed into with spillover benefits,” he says.
More than half of businesses blame schools for not providing pathways to middle-class labor jobs. But Albuquerque, N.M., mayor Richard J. Berry views the problem differently: Schools are failing to teach kids about trade jobs, and businesses aren’t jumping in with opportunities to learn.
“The industry on one side said, ‘We need a better-trained workforce’ but didn’t know how to put that through an educational framework, so we told them to create the curriculum and we’ll put it into practice,” Berry tells NationSwell after speaking at the 2017 NationSwell Summit on Solutions this past November.
Through the five-year long partnership Running Start for Careers, high school students receive dual credit for classes in plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry and other technical trades. The result? A 36 percent increase in the graduation rate among students who are traditionally lower income, according to Berry.
“We had kids asking, ‘Why am I in school?’” Berry says. “You can sit them down and explain to students all day in a classroom why they need geometry, but it doesn’t click until you get them to work with Joe the Carpenter who’s building roof trusses and explains why A-squared plus B-squared has to equal C-squared, or the roof will fall down. Then, they’ll become interested and see that there are actual roads to the middle class without having to be burdened with student debt.
Bravo, the site manager with Habitat for Humanity New York City, says that the interest to learn new skills exists, it just needs to be piqued.
“When you’re working with high school and college kids, you might spark an interest in something they didn’t realize they had,” he says. “You just have to show them a different angle of what they think they know.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Jared Bravo works for AmeriCorps. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
Tag: Habitat for Humanity
Entrepreneurs Trying to Catch a Break Get a Leg Up in Flint
Sometimes it’s hard to make money if you don’t have serious bank already.
This goes for low-income entrepreneurs especially. Businesses can take months, if not years, to turn a profit. But what if you need that profit now, to provide a roof over your head?
Habitat for Humanity knows a thing or two about putting roofs over people’s heads. Acknowledging the conundrum of start-ups, the national institution has launched an innovative program to provide people with homes and business space at the same time.
Starting with a pilot program in Flint, Mich., Habitat for Humanity will build live/work spaces for aspiring low-income entrepreneurs. The goal is to help the recipients establish a business while stabilizing blighted neighborhoods. The effort is a collaboration among Habitat, the University of Michigan and MasterCard, which chipped in a $400,000 grant.
The first recipients: Scott Hempel, 24, and Tyler Bienlein, 22. They plan to launch Great Escape Gaming on the bottom level and live in an apartment above in the Grand Traverse District Neighborhood on Court Street, a main route that leads to downtown Flint. The store will sell board games and serve as a community space where customers can gather and play.
“By giving gamers the opportunity to come in and play the game and try it out, that prompts them to want to buy the game,” Hempel told Nicole Weddington of MLive. “Also, having people in the store, you will sell things like drinks, snacks, food.”
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Teachers in the University of Michigan-Flint, including the school’s entrepreneur-in-residence Michael Witt, will mentor Hempel and Bienlein through the business startup process.
Sue Henderson, vice president of the U.S. and Canada for Habitat for Humanity International, told Weddington that in order to revitalize places like Flint, “First, you bring neighborhoods back. You get people living in houses, you take down blighted structures. And then the next step is, how do you bring business back?”
Or in Flint’s case, maybe you accomplish everything all at once with a single building.
Tricked Out Zero-Energy Homes Aren’t Just for the Rich and Famous
When you think of modern homes with solar panels and award-winning green designers, you probably imagine they’d be constructed somewhere in Beverly Hills or Malibu. But three net-zero energy homes have been built in a Los Angeles zip code you probably wouldn’t imagine — South Central, a notoriously disadvantaged area in the city.
As Jetson Green reports, notable green design studio Minarc, Habitat for Humanity, and the non-profit Restore Neighborhoods LA (RNLA) have built three modern and environmentally friendly homes in one of the poorest neighborhoods of LA. These prefabricated homes take up much less time, money and manpower to assemble thanks to Minarc’s interlocking panel system, called mnmMOD. In fact, these 3-bedroom homes — with sizes around 1,200 to 1,375 square feet — were erected in three short days, when traditional construction for homes this size would take around two weeks.
According to a property listing, these homes are completely net-zero, as the energy that they consume are offset by solar panels and a thermal wall system. The homes also feature a drought tolerant landscape, vegetable gardens, sustainable bamboo floors and other green features.
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The three homes are expected to sell between $300,000 to $325,000 (which is relatively cheap for a new home in Los Angeles). But not just anyone can swoop up these properties. According to Jetson Green, a potential buyer’s income has to be below 120 percent of the area median income for the Los Angeles metropolitan area. They also have to go through a home buyer education program in advance.
When 6.5 million low-income families spend more than 50 percent of their incomes on housing and utility costs, sustainable solutions are necessary to help keep roofs over heads. As John Perfitt, executive director of RNLA explained to Dwell.com, “We think that good design and new construction methods can, over time, have a very positive influence on restoring neighborhoods.” When it comes to sustainable homes, you don’t need a lot of green be green.
This Woman Returned Her Habitat for Humanity Home — and for a Good Reason
It’s not every day that a person asks to return a Habitat for Humanity home. But that’s what happened recently in Kerry County, Texas. Laci Kocurek, who built, maintained and lived in the home with her children for many years, called Karen Quanstrom, executive director of Habitat Kerr County, and said she wanted to deed the house back to the organization. “I had to tell [Quanstrom] several times what I really wanted, and even after that first phone conversation, she called me back several times and said, ‘I want to make sure you know what you’re doing,’” Kocurek told Habitat World. “She was pretty shocked.” In return, Kocurek wanted something very simple: for the organization to sell the home to another family who needed a place to live.
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Kocurek and her new husband were recently able to buy a home for their expanding family of five. In many cases, Habitat for Humanity will take back homes from owners and return the money that they have put into the mortgage. But for Kocurek, the family wanted to deed the home back to the organization in order to pass along the positive experience. “That was mine and my kids’ first home together — just us — so it was a little sad, but knowing that somebody else who didn’t have a home was going to be moving into it really overpowered that sadness,” Kocurek said. “It felt good. It really felt good.” Thanks to the family’s generosity, Habitat Kerr County is able to provide an additional family with a home this year. “That’s the wonderful joy of it,” Quanstrom said.
Why One Minnesota Teen Is Sleeping Outside for a Year
The temperature in Minnesota recently dropped to a blistering low of negative 27 degrees Fahrenheit, but that wasn’t cold enough to deter Rudy Hummel. What started as a personal challenge to sleep outside for a year has since morphed into a selfless mission for the 17-year-old to ensure that people and animals have homes. As part of his Snores Outdoors for a Better World campaign, this Hermantown, Minn., native is raising money for Habitat for Humanity and the local Hawk Ridge Bird Conservatory while building awareness for social and environmental issues. “I thought about what’s important to me, like the outdoors. I also thought about how many people have to sleep outside all the time, without sleeping bags or warm clothing,” Hummel wrote on his website. “At first glance, these don’t seem very well connected, but to me they are. Caring for people is important, and so is caring for the environment that sustains us. We all live on this planet together.”
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Hummel moved outside on June 7, 2013, in warmer weather. At first, the avid camper figured he’d try to sleep on a tree platform he built in his backyard for the entirety of the summer. But as fall breezed in, he realized that the challenge he had given himself simply wasn’t hard enough, so he decided to keep going. As Minnesota’s brutal winter arrived, Hummel realized he needed some sort of shelter to keep him warm, so like any good Boy Scout, he improvised and built himself a quinzhee, a hut-like structure made from snow. In the recently freezing weather, Hummel simply adds extra layers of warm clothing, fills a bottle with hot water and heads out to his hut, where he crawls under a pile of blankets at night. So far Hummel has raised almost $900 for his local Habitat for Humanity chapter, and $300 for Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory. As for his health, he says he’s doing just fine. “I’m about as warm as I would be inside, I think,” he recently told CNN’s NewDay. “But I haven’t slept inside in so long that maybe that’s not true.”
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