Home Builders Association of Denver | Starved For Workers, Colorado Construction Is Plugging The Gap With An Academy

Starved For Workers, Colorado Construction Is Plugging The Gap With An Academy

Shimai Hunter works on a 2"x4" at the Colorado Homebuilding Academy. She wants to get into the construction industry in hopes of better pay and a more flexible schedule. Michael Sakas/CPR News

Houses along the Front Range can’t be built fast enough. Part of the problem is a booming population. There’s also a shortage of construction workers to get the job done.

The Colorado Homebuilding Academy is an effort to get more people to work. People like Shimai Hunter.

“I don’t have any construction experience,” Hunter says. “I actually come from a case management background.”

No experience? No problem. The core of the program — what director Michael Smith calls their textbook — is half of a two-story house, most of its guts still exposed, standing in a warehouse near Denver’s Globeville neighborhood. The space around the house is littered with sawhorses and workstations. Hunter says the program was intimidating at first.

Read the rest of the article by Michael Sakas/CPR News