Training more construction-related workers is essential to solve the housing crisis

You can’t build 36,000 more housing units a year without increasing the number of workers in skilled trades and related support positions

The lack of affordable housing cannot be traced to a singular problem. Providing housing security for more people requires solving a series of inter-related problems:

Increasing the number of houses, which requires:

·      Making more land available for housing

·      Increasing the number of workers trained to build houses and apartments

Boosting the capacity of people to pay for housing, which can be done by:

·      Increasing the number of workers in family-wage jobs

·      Subsidizing housing for those who couldn’t afford it otherwise

Addressing societal issues that contribute to homelessness, particularly among those who are hardest. This is the hardest set of issues and involves:

·      Providing support services related to drug addiction and mental illness

·      Significantly increasing the supply of temporary shelter/housing

Yesterday, Gary Conkling examined some of the reasons securing land for new housing and redevelopment will be challenging. (Read his column here.) Today, I tackle the worker shortage. We will look at some of the other issues later this year as the housing debate evolves in the Legislature.

As anyone who has tried to find a plumber or electrician to repair something knows, there aren’t enough skilled trades people. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis estimates Oregon needs about 13,000 more residential construction workers.

The worker shortage frustrates those who have to wait weeks for minor repairs and lengthens the time required to complete major projects. And the problem appears destined to get worse before it gets better. According to numbers from the National Electrical Contractors Association, 7,000 electricians join the field each year, but 10,000 retire. The plumbing industry reports similar trends.

Because it’s a behind-the-scenes problem, the lack of skilled workers gets less discussion than some other facets of the homelessness and affordable housing crisis. But it is a foundational issue. Addressing the shortage of housing requires building as many units as possible as affordably as possible. A lack of workers greatly increases the difficulty of reaching both goals, as it both slows down and increases the cost of work.

There’s no quick fix for the lack of workers, either. Training programs, whether through apprenticeships, community colleges or trade schools, can take anywhere from one to four years – and occasionally more for complex skills. Given the pace at which workers are retiring, there’s no time for delay in recruiting more students into these programs. Recruitment efforts should include both financial incentives (scholarships, grants and paid work) and aggressive outreach to communities that have been underrepresented in the trades and are a high-potential source of future workers.

Success will require public-private cooperation. These types of partnerships are springing up all over the country. They often involve link-ups between trade groups and community colleges, such as this one at Portland Community College. Public-private partnerships to address housing and other socio-economic issues even were a topic at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Trades people are not the only workers who will be needed to meeting Gov. Tina Kotek’s aggressive housing goal of 36,000 new units a year, a more than three-fourths increase over recent levels of about 20,000 annual units. Building that many houses and apartments will create a mountain of paperwork. A partial solution to that challenge is to streamline the permitting process. But efficiency alone won’t be enough to handle 16,000 more units a year.

The paperwork for all those housing units will fall primarily on local governments, not the state. Few if any cities or counties have budget surpluses to use to hire significant numbers of additional workers. So, adequately staffing housing-related public agencies will require a combination of judicious hiring and realignment of existing workers. The solutions will vary from city to city and county to county based on local needs. How municipalities approach this challenge will be a good indication of whether governments in Oregon can be flexible enough to handle dynamic problems.

The worker shortage shares some common traits with other aspects of homelessness/housing affordability crisis. First, there isn’t a quick fix. So preaching patience, a message many voters don’t want to hear, will be an essential part of success. Second, any solution will require good, probably exceptional, management – and that is something that has been in short supply (some would say non-existent) in Oregon for many years. And that means that developing the right policies will be only a small step toward success for Gov. Kotek. She must significantly raise the bar for leadership and execution in Oregon.

Mark Hester is a retired journalist who worked at The Oregonian for 20 years as a business editor, sports editor and editorial writer.