In his State of the City speech earlier this year, Mayor Paul Young called for the building of 10,000 new or rehabbed homes over the next five years. God knows we need them. A phalanx of planners has proposed simplifying rules, regs, and restrictions to assist such an effort. Builders and developers are excited, community leaders are ecstatic, and anyone living in the squalor of a corporate rental or wondering how they could ever afford their own home is hoping that subsidies for builders will include subsidies for buyers. How about subsidies for teaching and training a whole new cadre of skilled workers?
Missing in this discussion by leaders, planners, builders, and buyers is the role of creating jobs and developing a new skilled workforce. The building or rehabbing of 10,000 homes is a tremendous opportunity to teach, train, and employ a new generation of well-paid workers. Missing in all these grand ideas is the idea of workforce development.
Missing also in these ideas are the trends of the future. More and more discussions around the workforce of the future portend caution and change for college-educated, white collar workers. As AI comes to the work world, many of the chores and skills necessary for knowledge workers in industries like accounting, finance, insurance, and yes, the arts will be upended.
At the same time, such a shift is predicted to favor skilled blue collar workers like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and even lowly laborers. To build 10,000 homes will take several thousand workers. This is an opportunity to train a whole new generation of skilled blue collar workers. And as the world turns from shedding white collar jobs to the necessity of creating blue collar jobs, Memphis is poised to flip not only a few houses, but entire lives.
Such an undertaking is not easy. Most developers and builders avoid the complications and costs of on-the-job training. A raw recruit is not as productive as a seasoned worker. Learning skills takes time, takes patience, takes teachers, takes mistakes. Experts in the workforce world recognize training gaps over a range of worries, from learning hard skills to practicing soft skills as simple as getting to work on time or having the right tools, clothes, and attitudes. As all teachers and workforce experts know: It is harder to build or rebuild a person than to erect or rehab a house.
Yet future building efforts will benefit our city in multiple ways if building 10,000 homes also means hiring, training, and assisting Memphians in erecting their own futures. Learning on the job carries advantages far beyond the idea of mere shelter. Great communities are built not just by having a place to live, but by having skills to sell and salaries beyond subsistence wages.
As AI decimates jobs and long-held positions in the white collar world, does it not seem to our advantage to go full bore on teaching trades and skills that AI — at least for now — will be unable to usurp? A city blossoming with a range of building trades is also the grounds for building another 30,000 homes, which the mayor cited as the actual need.
Blue collar chores are our super power in Memphis. I know dozens of Memphians who would be uncomfortable in an office, but more than happy to dig a footing, plumb a kitchen, or hang a door if they knew how and if they were paid well.
Our fair city is in the perfect position to benefit from this inversion of paid talent. Our housing is still affordable. Vacant lots spread like weeds in neighborhoods and along commercial strips. Not in east Memphis or the ’burbs where white collar jobs prevail, but in core city and low-income neighborhoods where deals abound. Can we not envision that Memphis is the city of the future rather than a shabby, beat-down community of people who cannot afford or do not know how to own, manage, and improve their own lot? Training 10,000 or more Memphians to build 39,000 homes seems like the gateway to a great city rising from the bones of a city built by those who saw the future, and it is us.
While living in Memphis for the last 45 years, Jim Kovarik has worked on local issues, such as housing, workforce, water, and neighborhood development. He lives on an acre in Midtown with his art-entrenched partner of 51 years — tending daily to trees, flowers, family, friends, and working to make Memphis a city of grace, beauty, and potential for all.
