Nearly every major American metro area saw an increase in residential home prices in the first quarter of 2021. Many home builders are now complaining of land shortages surrounding major US cities. Interestingly, at the same time that suburbanites are complaining of a lack of housing options, many of America’s large cities are dealing with the issue of abandoned blocks of housing, and declining tax bases. A solution to this problem could be the creation of a Federal program to train urban youth in the construction trades, so they can then find work restoring housing stock in American cities, and an additional program to provide low interest loans for the restoration of homes in blighted city neighborhoods.

In any population there will always be a certain percentage of young men who are perfectly fit for working in the construction and manual trades but who are not interested in going to college. A large part of the reason that crime is such a persistent problem in America’s cities is that decades of white flight have resulted in so many construction and service industry jobs leaving America’s cities for the suburbs. It’s a very simple equation that has existed in every population and every country since the beginning of time:

Lots of young men who are not interested in higher education
+ very few job opportunities
= an increase in crime and political instability

Now that younger generations of white people don’t seem to be as afraid of black and brown people as older generations were, America’s cities can be brought back to life by providing construction trades training for urban youth. That training should focus on providing young men and women with a level of skill that will allow them to earn a level of income that permits them to remain in the neighborhoods where they grew up as those neighborhoods gentrify.  When gentrification is done properly, and paired with job-training programs, it can become a boon for city communities, rather than a curse that drives African-American families out of their homes.

This kind of effort is not possible without a job training program. Currently, when it comes to construction, it’s not at all unusual to see rural whites driving in for hours from surrounding areas to do construction and repair work in our nation’s cities. There aren’t nearly enough rural white guys to do all of the work that needs to be done, and it’s ridiculous to try to incentivize having workers drive hours to get to the job site each day when there are communities in our nation’s cities filled with people who could be trained to do construction and manual trades jobs.

Investment in job-training, paired with restoration of housing stock has the potential to create a “virtuous cycle” in America’s cities. As more young men are trained in construction and maintenance trades, and financing is made available to restore older homes,  unemployment declines. As unemployment declines, drug use and crime rates fall. As crime falls and neighborhoods are rebuilt, the area tax base improves. As the tax base starts to grow, there’s more money to improve schools and other public services. As public schools and services improve, the area becomes more attractive to potential home buyers, and home values start to increase.

Now is an especially good time for this type of program as the expanded use of remote work technologies from the Covid19 pandemic has many companies talking about the possibility of moving out of major cities where rents for office space often run as high as $70 per square foot/per year, to smaller rust belt cities where similar space can be rented for less than $24/sf/yr. A great “flattening” of real estate demand and prices in the US, with real estate demand and rents arresting their ascent in cities like Brooklyn and San Francisco, and a broader distribution of wealth across the rest of the country could help to stabilize our national economy and reduce crime rates nationwide.

The only catch is this all has to be launched at a time when there is a high demand for housing. If this kind of program is launched during a period of declining real estate demand, it will fail to become self-sustaining, and conservative pundits will point their fingers and insist any kind of job training program for urban youth is a “liberal fantasy” and a waste of tax dollars. If Congress is going to pursue this kind of program, they have to do it quickly to  take advantage of current market conditions.