INDIANAPOLIS — Students at Ben Davis High School's Area 31 Career Center are helping address Indianapolis' affordable housing crisis while learning valuable construction skills through a partnership with local nonprofit Indy Gateway.
"Starting out, I could barely nail in with a hammer. Now I can do that pretty easily," said Eli Crowe, a student in the Area 31 Career Center Construction Trades program.
The program gives students hands-on experience building homes on the city's west side. The partnership with Indy Gateway began in 2016 with a mission to improve Wayne Township neighborhoods through affordable housing development.
"Indy Gateway is a community-based organization, and we do projects in affordable housing, trail work, parks, anything we can do to improve the quality of life here on the west side of Indianapolis," said Lisa Bentley, executive director of Indy Gateway. "We wanted to do what we could to raise the assessed value in Wayne Township."
The program also addresses a critical workforce shortage in construction trades. Bill O'Neal, who teaches construction trades at the Area 31 Career Center, went through the program as a high school student himself. He sees the urgent need for skilled workers.
"We have so many people retiring out of here and not enough skilled trades coming back into it. It's a high, high demand job right now, and we're struggling in every field out there," O'Neal said. "Everybody's needing help, and there's just not enough people going into the field. So we need to get these young guys and girls into the field."
Since the partnership began, six homes have been completed, five of which are in the Drexel Gardens neighborhood.
The collaboration creates a sustainable model where Indy Gateway owns the houses and properties, and when they sell a home, the funding goes back into the next Area 31 home project.
The houses are only sold to new home buyers because the goal is to expand home ownership in the community.
Students understand their work extends beyond individual properties to benefit entire neighborhoods.
"As much as we can help these communities, if we build one house, our teacher always says it brings up the property value of everyone else's house," Crowe said. "Maybe they think, 'Oh, we should maybe upgrade our house a little bit,' and just, it makes the community a bit safer and better in terms of appearance and the quality that people live in."
