Dr. Stephen Sills (Center for Housing and Community Studies) received new funding from Guilford County Schools for the project “Fannie Mae Innovation Challenge: Safer Together Green Housing.”
UNCG Center for Housing and Community Studies will be a partner on the Guilford County Schools application to the Fannie Mae Challenge. The researchers’ innovative idea is to extend the community’s existing collaborative work around affordable housing into high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) classrooms, to prepare a young work force to attain careers in construction and business with a keen understanding of why safe, affordable housing is scarce and declining; the critical role safe housing plays in families’ stability and prosperity; and how to create and rehabilitate affordable housing using GIS to develop projects and applying LEED standards to their design.
This project attempts to solve the problems of preparing a workforce to drive innovation in the housing industry and building a stronger pipeline of rehab and construction projects to provide more very low income students with stable home and school experiences. The project will offer students a dual study in construction and business, engaging CTE students with MWBE subcontractors to apply developing construction skills on housing rehab projects. The project applies classroom learning to the real world issue of our community’s acute shortage of affordable housing and engages CTE students in proposing and testing solutions.
The role of UNCG CHCS will be to 1) collaborate in development of geospatial technology/social determinants lessons for CTE students; 2) host GCS students for an introductory geospatial technology workshop; and 3) assist in identifying single-family rehab projects for student project-based learning.
