Investment propertyWho Will Build The Homes of Tomorrow?
If anyone has bothered to glance through real estate news in newspapers and
on the Internet, they can"t begin to count how many stories are currently
being written on the construction trade labor shortage. Stories are replete
with the need for foreign labor, since our ready supply has dwindled down to
almost zero. As with any service or skill that is heavily in demand,
contractors are calling most of the shots, informing builders when and where
they will be available in the coming months, and naming their price for the
privilege.
It doesn"t take a rocket scientist to point out that the problem exists, but
if these contractors and their skilled tradesmen are experiencing unlimited
earning potential, why on earth aren"t young men and women flocking to learn
the trades? What message have we been drumming into them that helping to
create the American Dream is less than noble? When California newspaper
headlines admit only 1 student in three who starts high school will graduate
on time in 4 years, something has slipped through the cracks while we mind
our own Baby Boom business, smugly entrenched in our own careers.
Joseph Costion is CEO of Vocational Building Skills in Sanders, Arizona, a
non-profit educational corporation which has, since 1989, been teaching
building trades to the Navajos by way of a federal grant. He has created this
opportunity in collaboration with the local community college, and has
graduated 139 students from the trades since the program began. This unique
program uses a combination of esteem-building, classroom learning, and actual
hands-on experience through local community projects. Many of the VBS
graduates have gone to the local Carpenters union in Flagstaff, Arizona, or
in Phoenix. The happy fact is, these are skills that can be taken anywhere
new construction is taking place, making it possible for these young men and
women to find work across the country.
The sad fact is that, as of July 31, this program will lose its funding,
leaving idle building trades facilities, tools and equipment. There is hope
that five high school districts in and around Show Low, Arizona, have
recently elected to create a vocational district. (Remember the "trade"
school concept?) Costion is working to become part of this movement, teaching
high school students the trades by building a house each year on a lot and
then selling it.
Novel concept? This is merely an example and model that can be used for
school districts nation wide, to help give meaning and a future to millions
of young men and women at a crossroads in their educational development. So
many of us figure students not interested in or capable of attending college
as being on the losing end of future success, when new home building trades -
the collective catalyst that can affect so much of the national economy -are
screaming for more skilled tradesmen and women. If more school districts and
forward-looking people in power examined the feasibility and benefit of a
program that has the potential to pay for itself , while helping pave the
road for so many young futures, every one could come out a winner.
Times were when a finish or master carpenter was regarded as a skilled
craftsman in his own right. If we begin to think of other tradesmen, such as
those providing framing for our new homes, or perfecting the new, high tech
structured wiring for our elaborately networked computer systems for our home
offices, in the same way we revered these artisans, perhaps high school
students with a fuzzy vision of the life ahead of them may pause and take note
that the future, with its limitless possibilities, is indeed a road paved with
gold.
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