From the Midwest to the Mountain West: Investing in housing and jobs

Affordable housing and a skilled workforce are often treated as two separate challenges. From the Midwest to the Mountain West, a coalition of local partners, universities, and public officials have a different view: address affordable housing and a skilled workforce as one related opportunity.

As communities experience a demand for affordable housing, there is increasing awareness that a lack of housing and the skilled trades shortage feed each other. When there is no housing, workers cannot afford to stay. When there are no workers, housing cannot be built. Break the cycle in one place and you ease the pressure in the other, setting more communities up for sustained success.

“There’s such an inherent link between affordable housing and the skilled trades,” said Jason Rosenberg, head of Public Affairs at Wells Fargo. “Communities can’t grow if they don’t have housing that attracts and keeps talent, yet you need skilled workers to keep the housing industry local and affordable. This challenge is particularly acute in smaller towns and rural areas. Wells Fargo has stepped into that gap, investing in housing and jobs so communities can be on a path to economic growth.”

This summer, Wells Fargo embarked on a five-state, $5 million tour across Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming to invest in community-led efforts addressing housing and workforce. The goal was simple: expand locally-driven ideas and innovation that help more people afford to live where they work. The tour builds on the company’s longstanding work with nonprofits and colleges nationwide to increase opportunities for affordable housing and promising careers in the housing trades.

In places like Omaha, workforce training will expand helping students build real homes that will stay in the community. In more rural areas like Casper, Wyoming, a new construction technology, taught to local students, will bring innovation that can speed up the time it takes to build a home, while delivering durability, quality, and affordability. Each regional partner customizes housing solutions for community needs, but the conviction is universal: we need to address the affordable housing shortage with dual investment in building homes and training the workers to build them.

Here’s a look at how Wells Fargo’s most recent investments across the country are shaping housing infrastructure in cities, towns, and rural areas.

“Quality affordable housing provides stability, dignity, and peace of mind,” said Dan Madler, CEO of Beyond Shelter. And too many people across North Dakota are still waiting for access to it.”

In August, Wells Fargo, which has served North Dakota communities since 1885, announced a combined $1.2 million investment from the company and the Wells Fargo Foundation in Beyond Shelter and Junior Achievement North, a Minnesota-based nonprofit focused on experiential learning that drives real economic mobility.

Through a newly branded Junior Achievement pop-up classroom, the next generation of homeowners will have access to financial education and information about the requirements of homeownership.

“Housing impacts a community because it impacts people,” said Madler. “When people have a safe, affordable place to live, they experience greater stability, less stress, and a stronger sense of security. Those individual benefits then ripple outward to families, employers, neighborhoods, and communities.”

For students and working adults in and around Jerome, Idaho, the distance to College of Southern Idaho’s (CSI) Twin Falls campus can create real financial and personal barriers to higher education and workforce training.

That’s changing with CSI’s new LeRoy Craig Jerome Center, a 20,000-square-foot facility offering hands-on training in construction, electrical, plumbing, welding, and manufacturing trades right where students live and work. A $500,000 grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation helped make it possible.

“Idaho is growing quickly,” said Brett Madron, CSI’s Senior Director of Workforce and Economic Development. “But for years, places like Twin Falls and Jerome were seen as exporters of talent, with young people feeling they had to leave to do something amazing. The reality is that amazing opportunities exist here, too.”

Madron sees workforce development and housing affordability as closely connected.

“Building the skilled workforce attracts employers, keeps talent, creates high-paying jobs, and turns workers into homeowners. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

For most of her adult life, Emily Van Dorin felt like she lived out of boxes.

A native of Indianola, Iowa, she spent years renting, moving, and raising her son while navigating life’s challenges. A conversation with her mother led her to apply for Habitat for Humanity’s homeownership program. After completing the required volunteer hours and financial education classes, she picked up the keys to her new home.

“I went downstairs, laid on the carpet, and just cried,” Van Dorin said of walking into her new home for the first time. “I kept thinking, ‘This is mine. This is mine.’”

Wells Fargo recently announced $1.5 million in funding for Habitat for Humanity, including support for a new $1 million Rural Housing Innovation Fund that uses modular construction to reduce build timelines and expand affordable housing in rural communities nationwide. The Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity affiliate received $500,000 from Wells Fargo to continue helping people like Van Dorin.

“This home has helped me spread my wings a little bit,” she said, “and find my own peace.”

At Metropolitan Community College (MCC) in Omaha, Nebraska, students are learning homebuilding skills in a full-sized house built at the school’s construction lab. Rashad Deal, a first-generation college student, can’t get enough of the lab because it’s a peek into his future.

He represents what the Wells Fargo Foundation’s $1.25 million grant in support of MCC and local nonprofit HomeWoven is designed to produce: a workforce capable of building affordable homes and future homeowners prepared to purchase them. HomeWoven helps connect those two needs by offering students on-the-job experience with construction of affordable homes in South Omaha.

“I don’t plan on leaving Omaha anytime soon,” Deal said. “I intend to have a management position in some kind of residential work and my own home in the next few years. I want to be able to give back and help create affordable housing for Omaha.”

Jason Mackie and Aaron Resnick have long believed that quality housing is a foundation for a good life. That’s why they co-founded InOurHands — to find innovative solutions to the housing crisis.

Their answer: High Performance Structural Cellular Concrete (HPSCC), a proprietary building material that’s fireproof, wind-resistant, energy-efficient, and cost-effective.

A $1 million Wells Fargo Foundation grant to Wyoming Housing Network (WHN) is helping InOurHands put the technology to work through Goodwill Landing, a 24-home development in Casper, Wyoming, that will allow Casper College students to train on-site through the build. Goodwill Landing is intended to serve as a replicable model for future affordable housing developments across the state.

“Our goal is to strengthen Wyoming communities by providing quality resources and opportunities for people to reach their housing goals,” said Melissa Noah, executive director of WHN.

The projects look different from state to state — a training center in Idaho, Habitat homes in Iowa towns, a housing development for seniors in North Dakota, innovative construction techniques in Wyoming, and workforce partnerships in Nebraska.

Together, however, they reflect a common belief that communities are strongest when people can afford to live, work, and build their futures close to home.