These Los Angeles community colleges offer construction job training

from Adam EchelmanCalMatters

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Hudson Aidov wasn’t excited about any of his college options — that is, until his Los Angeles house burned down in the Palisades fire his senior year of high school.

Less than a week after graduation, he and one of his classmates enrolled in the carpentry program at Los Angeles Trade and Technical College, a community college south of downtown. Their goal is to one day start a construction company and help rebuild the Palisades. “We have big, big 10-year plans,” he said during a break in his morning class.

His personal tragedy led to the decision, but he also felt it was wise to continue a job in high demand, especially now. Before the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, Los Angeles already had a shortage of about 70,000 skilled construction workers. The destruction of thousands of homes and businesses during the fires made this problem even worse. The city now needs more than 100,000 new workers in construction and construction-related careers, according to single state analysiswhich estimates average pay at just under $30 an hour, though it varies by position and experience level.

Last year, the state awarded five Los Angeles community colleges a total of $5 million to train more workers who can help rebuild after the Palisades and Eaton fires. The money just recently arrived at Los Angeles Trade and Technical College, where it will fund supplies and new curriculum for students entering the construction industry. Pasadena City College, a few miles northeast of Los Angeles Trade-Tech, used some of the money to build center with an area of ​​55,000 square meters for construction training.

Historically, it takes years to rebuild after devastating fires, and some California cities hit hard by wildfires in 2017 and 2018 still have only a fraction of their homes rebuilt.

“We can’t kick out enough people,” said Jaime Alvarez, one of Idov’s carpentry instructors, as students hammered, sawed and drilled all around him. Alvarez has about 30 students this semester. The technical college’s four-semester carpentry program is probably the largest such program in the state, enrolling over 1,800 people annually.

Restoring the base of the Palisades

Idov is still living in an AirBnB with the few belongings he grabbed the night he evacuated his home. He has some of his clothes and a few personal items that he can fit in his car, like a bowling pin from a birthday party he went to as a kid. The rest is gone, he said.

Most days school starts at 7am and ends around noon. He usually spends his afternoons working part-time for a general contractor. The carpentry program is designed to take approximately two years to complete, approximately 25 hours per week. This semester, he is learning how to build concrete foundations, how to drill rebar into those foundations and construct the frame of a building, work that is especially needed in the fire-damaged parts of Los Angeles.

The extreme heat from the fires doesn’t just burn the wood; it also makes concrete foundations brittle and unstable, Alvarez said. However, his course should be sparing with the use of concrete as it is expensive.

Although the college’s building, maintenance and utilities programs have a combined annual budget of more than $10 million, most of the money goes to staff salaries, leaving just over $575,000 for many of the supplies students use, said Abigail Patton, vice president for academic affairs. She said the state fire relief grant will help supplement the cost of delivery, including the Alvarez-grade concrete.

While government funding helps, other money has recently fallen through. In 2024, Los Angeles Trade-Tech was one of the recipients of a $20 million federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The college was to receive $2 million through that grant, some of which went to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development, an economic development organization based in South Los Angeles.

The money was to support the college’s building programs, where students will learn about home weatherization, lead reduction and residential energy audits. The federal agency disbursed just over $88,000 of the grant to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development before abruptly canceling it last May after President Trump took office. Environmental justice groups sued attractive the Trump administration’s decision.

The Coalition for Responsible Community Development declined to comment on the grant, but the Environmental Protection Agency was blunt in its comments. “Perhaps the Biden-Harris administration should not have forced its sweeping agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ priorities into EPA’s core mission,” Brigitte Hirsch, the department’s press secretary, said in an email to CalMatters. “Thankfully, those days are over.”

“It’s not all fun and games”

Some short-term community college construction certificates may result in high paying jobsincluding some that pay over $40 an hour. Many of Los Angeles Trade-Tech’s programs, including carpentry, electrical maintenance and welding, are popular and often at capacity.

But students who enroll rarely graduate. After all, about 33% of students who started in Los Angeles Trade-Tech’s construction, maintenance and utilities programs earned a certificate, degree or transferred to a university within four years, according to the college’s data from students who started in 2021. Low graduation rates are typical of most community colleges. Many students, especially low-income students, struggle to cope with the demands of the school along with caring for children or elderly parents and working full-time or part-time.

“We get floods of students who want to do this, and I say it’s not all fun and games in terms of swinging a hammer,” said Nicole Jordan, who teaches the first semester in the carpentry program. “We do a lot of math and a lot of book work.” Before Jordan’s students start building anything, they must study blueprints and Los Angeles building codes to know what is possible and required by law.

Still, there is a sense of community among students who vary in age and ethnicity. To help them get through it, Jordan’s first-semester students are cheering. “We’re the best,” shouts one student as they sit in the classroom. “Carpentry,” they all reply in unison.

After the applause, Jordan approaches the whiteboard and the class settles down. She sketched the blueprint of a home. If they stay, students will build this home in just four semesters.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.