Gov. Josh Stein recently said that North Carolina is on track to be short nearly 750,000 homes by 2029, which would put more pressure on an already strained housing market. Kelly Lester, a policy analyst at John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power, and Life, said that to keep up with this demand, the state will need more than just new homes — it will need the people to build them.
“Bringing more young people into the trades, especially women, who remain underrepresented in the industry, is one of the most practical ways to increase North Carolina’s homebuilding capacity, reduce development costs, and, subsequently, make housing more affordable over time,” Lester said.
One Charlotte-based nonprofit has built a program designed to inspire and train young women for careers in the trades.
“Our goal is to get women to work as quickly as possible,” said LaToya Faustin, executive director of She Built This City. “She Built This City is committed to addressing this challenge through our Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program and Women’s Repair Crew Apprenticeship.”
She Built This City offers programs that introduce girls and young women to the skilled trades beginning as early as middle school.
“We are a workforce development organization that believes career decisions are made early, so we start early,” Faustin said. “We work with children as young as seven years old through hands-on building projects.”
The organization provides participants with hands-on experience in a variety of trades, including carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, and construction. Beyond technical skills, She Built This City also focuses on building confidence and creating pathways to stable, well-paying careers in an industry where women remain significantly underrepresented.
All pre-apprenticeship programs are aimed to make students “Day One ready” so that they can start adding value and contributing to projects from their first day on the job. The organization believes this level of preparedness is essential for building up career-long confidence.
“I believe, and the work of She Built This City believes, that if you give a person a good paying job, they can take care of themselves and their families,” Faustin said. “We can navigate other challenges better when that core financial component is taken care of.”
As North Carolina decides how to tackle its rising housing costs, Faustin believes that organizations like She Built This City can help inspire the next generation to pursue a career in the trades and ultimately reduce costs.
“We are about 350,000 tradespeople short of the current demand for commercial, residential, and manufacturing building needs,” Faustin said. “We are trying to build the funnel, which is all about who is going to choose the trades. Programs exist for high school students, the problem is not enough people are choosing that path.”
One student of the pre-apprenticeship program believes that many women are not choosing the trades because training and apprenticeship programs often feel intimidating to begin.
“On my own, it definitely would have been a longer and harder process,” said Olivia Whitaker, a recent graduate of a She Built This City pre-apprenticeship program that focused on carpentry, painting and welding. “There are resources that come straight from the pre-apprenticeship program.”
During these pre-apprenticeship programs, students have access to a variety of resources including preferred job pathways and intermittent stipend. Whitaker noted that in particular, “The stipends are very helpful” while in search of a job.
She is a current community college student at Central Piedmont Community College, and her experiences through She Built This City led her to reimagine her career and her major, opting to pursue a new area where she sees more opportunity for advancement.
“I changed my courses to pursue communications and business degrees,” Whitaker said. “She Built This City widened my horizons to bigger opportunities in construction management.”
Faustin said that She Built This City has helped hundreds of women along their journey to becoming tradespeople, a vital profession that provides both economic opportunities for the women that aren’t familiar with construction careers, but also helps fill the workforce in a time with such high construction demand.
Both Faustin and Whitaker stressed the important role tradespeople will play in meeting the growing housing demand, helping seniors stay in aging homes, and ultimately lowering prices. Like many construction organizations and businesses across the state, She Built This City has run into regulations that drive up costs.
“We are looking into becoming a general contractor,” said Faustin. “Those barriers exist. Some of those barriers are counterproductive to a small business growing. We are not anti-regulation, but I would question some of the thresholds that are required.”
She recounted a project that She Built This City had taken to convert a first-floor closet into a bathroom for a senior who could no longer climb up stairs.
“The whole project will be less than $40,000, but in order to get a building permit, we have to get an architect to stamp the plan,” Faustin said. “Previously you didn’t have to do that. It adds an additional $2,000 onto the job.”
Faustin is referring to local Mecklenburg County regulations that require architects for every structural or use change serviced by a non-general contractor. For many organizations, these barriers and costs are high enough to prevent taking on projects. If an organization that is not a certified general contractor wants to change a space’s use or alter any structural components, they must seek external planning.
While it is important to ensure general contractors are qualified, she believes that current barriers are unnecessary and expensive. This aggressive regulatory system means higher costs for residents and longer wait times while not improving the safety of the building.
With or without regulatory changes, Faustin hope organizations like She Built This City can bring more women into the trades and help increase the stock of housing.
