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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Published: June 11, 1999

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A veteran of the real estate and homebuilding industries since 1986, Dena Kouremetis first joined Realty Times as a new homes writer in 1998. Since then, she has authored four books, written consumer columns on new homes issues for websites and newspapers all across the country, contributed to builder trade magazines, appeared as a guest expert on several radio shows and even created a ten-chapter podcast for LendingTree.com’s homebuilder website, iNest.com, now available on iTunes, entitled Uncharted Waters; Navigating the Purchase of a New Production Home. Kouremetis recently joined her local Folsom, CA Coldwell Banker office as a broker associate while continuing to write for the real estate industry. For the past three years, she has been training real estate agents for both the resale and new homes industries, putting her experience, research expertise and gift of expression to work to help others entering the business.