A group of 26 high school students used their construction skills to build a house for a local family in their community.
For one of the students, Pedro Rivera, seeing an entire house sitting on the back of a trailer as it rolled down a suburban road in Detroit, MI, was as surreal as realizing that he and his friends had built it with their very own hands.
Rivera, an Oakland Schools Technical Campus-Northeast student, told 7 Action News, “All my friends, we all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, this is what we did’.”
26 High School students from Oakland school technical campus Northeast- built this 1368 square-foot, three bedroom, two bath home. It will be moved to a location in Pontiac. @WWJ950 @WWJTraffic @FOX2News @OaklandSchools @cityofpontiacmi #school #Wednesday @OLHSACommAction pic.twitter.com/yDdk50sCdC
— Charlie Langton (@charlielangton) May 24, 2023
The school, located on Perry Street, happens to be a technical campus where students go to specialize in carpentry, electrical work, or additions. However, Aaron Swett – the school instructor who led the project – explained that building the 1,368-square-foot home from the ground up helps introduce the students to a barrage of construction trades.
Sweet also shared in an interview with Upworthy.com, “They usually have an idea of what they want to do. ‘I want to flip houses’ or ‘I want to be a carpenter’ or ‘I want to build decks.’ And then we get in, we start building the house and they get exposed to careers they never knew existed.”
Sweet adds, “Our students leave with the opportunity to go right into the work force. They’ve got the skills of what all the employers are looking for. We get employers reaching out to us throughout the year to try hiring our students and our students leave here and they take many different paths. We’ve got students that are going to Michigan State for their construction management program. We’ve got students that are going to the Detroit Carpenter Apprenticeship School.”
The program allows the students to work alongside professional tradesmen to prepare them for their futures in construction and carpentry, highly needed professions in the United States. At the same time, the program manages to provide low and middle-income homes for the state of Michigan which sorely lacks these types of housing units. In fact, the state had announced back in September of 2022 that it aimed to increase the number of low and middle-income households by at least 13,500 units.
The cost of the home sits at $100,000 for materials but sells on the market for approximately $170,000. Notably, this is around half of the nationwide median listing price.
Rivera also shared about the project, “Just seeing it getting lifted and everything, it was kind of like ‘Wow, this is our accomplishment. It’s going to a good family. Good home, good neighborhood – it’s nice.”
What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!
True Activist / Report a typo
