Tag Archives: housing development

‘ALICE’ Families Focus of New Docudrama by Education Based Housing, Premieres July 21

HOUSTON, Texas /ScoopCloud/ -- A $500 or $1,000 unplanned expense is enough to send an ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) family spiraling according to a report by Bankrate. Education Based Housing, a Houston nonprofit that serves ALICE families and communities knows this to be true. The organization partnered with Cypress creative agency, PrettyWork Creative to produce a docudrama to show situations real families face and expand the national conversation on ALICE families.

"The Spiral" will premiere Thursday, July 21, 2022 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the India House, 8888 West Bellfort St., Houston, TX 77031.

Education Based Housing Chief Executive Officer, Jarvis Taylor, believes the short film will help "unpack how stereotypes affect a communities' ability to access resources and services." According to Taylor, individualist pursuits and chasing the American dream has led to deeper levels of poverty for many thus continuing the cycle of generational poverty. The solution, according to Taylor, is building successful, thriving communities. "It's going to take all of us to overcome systemic poverty," said Taylor.

The docudrama is based on a combination of news headlines and personal stories and leaves viewers asking, "what would you do?" Premiere attendees will have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ask questions of Taylor and other guest panelists.

Click here to watch the film's trailer and go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/masquerade-a-short-film-premiere-tickets-342443597017 to register for the free premiere.

About Education Based Housing:

Education Based Housing's (EBH) mission is to work with ALICE households to provide access to quality housing and tools to help them sustainably thrive. By expanding the knowledge and comfort level that individuals and families have with a variety of work-related skills, EBH helps broaden a family's opportunities and empower each member with practical skills to help them achieve their goals.

With a variety of training programs including medical assistant and accounting specialist training, class attendees are better prepared to seek better jobs and continue their education, so that they will be role models for their families and communities.

Learn more: https://educationbasedhousing.org/

VIDEO (Vimeo): https://vimeo.com/725407883/ecfb18b9ee

RELATED LINKS:

https://educationbasedhousing.org/who-we-are/mission.html

https://prettyworkcreative.com/

A $500 or $1,000 unplanned expense is enough to send an ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) family spiraling according to a report by Bankrate. Education Based Housing, a Houston nonprofit that serves ALICE families and communities knows this to be true. It partnered with Cypress creative agency, PrettyWork Creative to produce a docudrama to show situations real families face and expand the national conversation on ALICE families.

Related link: https://educationbasedhousing.org/

Community Housing Partnership Announces Name Change to HomeRise

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. /ScoopCloud/ -- Community Housing Partnership announced today that it has changed its name to HomeRise. More than 30 years ago, the norm for helping someone experiencing homelessness was to put them up in a small, furnished room and hope for the best. That changed when nonprofit housing developers and homelessness advocates came together and formed Community Housing Partnership.

We were founded on the simple yet powerful idea that providing a home combined with support services could provide the stability a person needs to escape homelessness for good. This idea, known as supportive housing, will continue to be at the heart of what HomeRise does.

But it hasn't always been easy, especially these past few years. The changing economy coupled with competition for housing pushed more people onto the streets. More people felt like things were moving in the wrong direction. Then, the pandemic showed us how many more of our neighbors were already living on the brink. News coverage called our city a failure. The human suffering became too much to bear. And San Francisco began to lose hope.

"HomeRise is our antidote to lost hope. It is the power of a stable home to help a person rise up from their circumstances after life has knocked them down. HomeRise is when everyday San Franciscans rise up and play their part to make a difference," said Rick Aubry, CEO of HomeRise.

If there's one thing we've learned from our past 30 years, it's that rising up and working together is where hope comes from. At HomeRise, we believe that together, we can change lives and rebuild this city we love.

About HomeRise:

HomeRise is the leading nonprofit in San Francisco helping people experiencing homelessness rise up and transform their lives. Our mission is built on a simple-but-powerful idea: We combine housing with support services, like mental health services and job training, and empower our residents to advocate for local policies that create long-term change. We believe a home has the power to stabilize a person's life - helping people to improve their health, cook for their family, find a job, begin paying rent, feel a sense of dignity, and contribute to the community.

Together with our supporters, we are changing lives and rebuilding the neighborhoods and city that we love. Each year, HomeRise's supportive housing transforms the lives of more than 1,900 adults, children, seniors, and veterans who experienced homelessness. The impact is long-lasting: 98% of our past and present residents who experienced homelessness stay housed. To learn how you can rise up and make a difference, visit: https://homerisesf.org/.

Community Housing Partnership announced today that it has changed its name to HomeRise. More than 30 years ago, the norm for helping someone experiencing homelessness was to put them up in a small, furnished room and hope for the best. That changed when nonprofit housing developers and homelessness advocates came together and formed Community Housing Partnership.

Related link: https://homerisesf.org/

Study: Housing Workforce Shortage Is Barrier to Affordability

OAKLAND, Calif. /ScoopCloud/ -- According to California's Housing and Community Development Department (HCD), the golden state must dramatically increase the productive capacity of its residential construction sector in order to create enough new housing to improve affordability. However, new research released today by Smart Cities Prevail shows the industry has failed to make the investments necessary to compete for the more than 200,000 new workers necessary to meet this ambitious goal.

Click here to read the report Rebuilding California: The Golden State's Housing Workforce Reckoning (PDF): https://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SCP_HousingReport.0107.pdf

Click here to read the executive summary of the report (PDF): https://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SCP_EXEC.summary_0110.pdf

"The data shows residential construction work is more dangerous, economically risky, and lower paying than most other jobs in our economy," said study author Scott Littlehale. "When you consider these dynamics alongside the industry's aging workforce, its failure to institutionalize investments in apprenticeship training, and a shrinking supply of young workers and immigrants, it is clear why the housing sector is struggling to attract the new workers it needs."

While construction jobs require longer commutes, more flexibility in work hours, and far higher risk of workplace injury and death than other jobs, Littlehale found residential construction workers earn 24 percent less per year than all other jobs on average, and less than half have health insurance coverage through their employer. Wage theft in the industry has grown by 400 percent since 1972. When adjusted for cost of living, California's median construction wage ranks 46th in the United States.

Compounding the problem, Littlehale found, is that the labor pool on which residential construction firms have relied since the 1980s is shrinking. California's stock of young male workers without a college degree has fallen since 2005, and its supply of non-naturalized immigrants has decreased by almost 350,000 between 2005 and 2016.

"Because of its decades-long reliance on a lower-wage, lower skilled workforce, California's housing construction industry finds itself ill-equipped to compete in today's labor market," Littlehale added. "Considering the inherent physical dangers and economic volatility, the work simply does not pay enough to lure workers away from other states or other industries."

While construction requires substantially more pre-employment training than most other jobs, Littlehale notes the residential construction industry has largely avoided institutionalized investments in apprenticeship. The few programs that are offered are managed only by employers and funded on a "voluntary" basis-and produce 90 percent fewer workers than "joint labor-management" programs financed through collective bargaining agreements and prevailing wage laws.

"Housing contractors have no real incentive to invest in training programs that would attach a more stable supply of skilled labor to the industry unless their competitors are doing it too," Littlehale said. "As a result, the industry lacks a training pipeline capable of attaching an adequate supply of skilled workers to residential construction careers."

The housing industry last produced new housing on the scale called for by HCD in the 1970s and 1980s. This was also a period when more residential construction workers were covered by collective bargaining agreements mandating competitive wage levels, fringe benefits, and apprenticeship training standards. But data shows that since then, productivity per unit of labor in construction has been declining, even as it has grown by more than 30 percent on average in other economic sectors.

"As the industry moved away from arrangements that were able to attract, retain and re-supply the industry's stock of skilled labor, it has generally relied on a large number of low wage workers to meet increased production demands," Littlehale observed. "That option no longer exists, so housing contractors need a strategy to attract and retain more skilled workers."

Though the housing sector has focused on regulatory reforms to accelerate approvals of new construction, Littlehale believes such changes are unlikely to affect the industry's overall productivity without addressing the shrinking labor pool and lagging productivity.

"Ultimately, housing builders' reservoir of low-wage, less-skilled labor is not refilling itself," Littlehale concluded. "The industry should consider labor-management cooperation measures like prevailing wage and collective bargaining agreements because they are consistently associated with higher wages, increased apprenticeship enrollment, more production efficiency, and fewer workplace safety problems. By improving labor market competitiveness, wider utilization of these workforce development arrangements would help restore California residential building to the production engine it once was."

Scott Littlehale has authored numerous studies on the U.S. political economy, labor related public policy and the construction industry since 1993. He served on the technical committee of CASA - The Committee to House the Bay Area - between 2017 and 2018. Follow him on Twitter.

Smart Cities Prevail is a leading national non-profit research and education organization focused on the construction industry. Learn more at https://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/, or by following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Twitter: @CaCitiesPrevail @FactChecker23 #workforcestudy #constructionjobs

According to California's Housing and Community Development Department (HCD), the golden state must dramatically increase the productive capacity of its residential construction sector in order to create enough new housing to improve affordability. However, new research released today by Smart Cities Prevail shows the industry has failed to make the investments necessary to compete for the more than 200,000 new workers necessary to meet this ambitious goal.

Related link: https://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/

Open Letter from City Leaders Calls for Prevailing Wages in State Housing Reforms

SACRAMENTO, Calif. /ScoopCloud/ -- In an open letter that ran as a full page ad in today's Sacramento Bee, elected leaders from six of California's eight largest cities called on California Governor Jerry Brown and the State Legislature to include prevailing wage standards in state housing reforms. The ad was paid for by Smart Cities Prevail (SCP).

The Legislature is currently considering a range of proposals aimed at combating California's persistent housing affordability crisis.

Click Here to View the Ad (PDF): http://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/05/SacBeeAd.pdf.

Smart Cities Prevail (SCP) is a non-profit research organization that focuses on wage policies and contracting standards in the construction industry. The ad was signed by a group of local elected officials from the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento.

The ad references ongoing efforts to streamline more housing development - with several proposals under consideration to combat California's persistent housing affordability crisis again this year.

"Real housing reform needs to do more than simply streamline more development," the leaders write. "We need to promote investment in the people who are doing the building, and struggling to pay the rent in our communities."

The ad highlights findings from a new SCP study entitled, "The Value of Linking Good Construction Jobs to California's Housing Reforms (http://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/03/SCP_HousingReport.0314.pdf)."

Utilizing Economic Census data and industry standard data analysis, this study highlights how a variety of factors are contributing to California's housing affordability crisis-including significant increases in profits for developers and builders, shrinking wages for blue-collar construction workers, and declining productivity for the construction industry as a whole. It concludes that including prevailing wage standards in state housing reforms would help the industry attract and develop the skills needed to boost housing supply, while also helping to close the affordability gap for working families, reducing racial disparities in pay, and saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year by reducing reliance on public assistance.

"With real blue-collar construction wages down 25 percent over the last two decades, the suggestion that labor costs hinder the construction of more housing supply is simply not supported by the facts or the financial realities of the industry," said study author Alex Lantsberg. "With housing prices and profits soaring, the industry is well positioned to invest in productivity and affordability for its own workforce. We can make good progress towards both objectives by incorporating prevailing wage standards into state housing reforms."

Smart Cities Prevail has also posted today's open letter online. Members of the public who want to lend their voice in support of including prevailing wage in state housing reforms can do so at: http://www.smartcitiesprevail.org/housingpetition/.

Smart Cities Prevail is a leading national non-profit research and education organization focused on the construction industry. Learn more at http://www.smartcitiesprevail.org, or by following us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SmartCitiesPrevail) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/cacitiesprevail).

MEDIA CONTACT:
Todd Stenhouse
(916) 397-1131
toddstenhouse@gmail.com

In an open letter that ran as a full page ad in today's Sacramento Bee, elected leaders from six of California's eight largest cities called on California Governor Jerry Brown and the State Legislature to include prevailing wage standards in state housing reforms. The ad was paid for by Smart Cities Prevail (SCP).