Built by design: Georgina's new GTTI Skilled Trades Institute builds affordable homes

Yorkregion.com
August 13, 2020

This is the house that the Georgina Trades Training Inc. built.

Actually, it’s more like 68 homes that skilled trade students built.

With a $4 million nod from the province, along with more than $2 million from the town, Georgina Trades Training Inc. (GTTI) can get moving, building and erecting a pipe dream -- a dedicated Skilled Trades Institute right here in Georgina.

Under scrutiny of licensed professionals following strict building code guidelines, trainees will build modular homes in new construction domes located on Metro Road.

“Students are not building for the sake of building something,” said GTTI chairperson John De Faveri.

“In current [skilled trades training] models, students are building partial walls using recycled material. Building it and taking it down. But at the end of this program, there will be a sellable product.”

At the end of each 26-week program, GTTI will have several 1,100 to 1,200 square-foot modular bungalows along with hundreds of skilled tradespeople who are job ready.

The pre-sold homes will then be moved off site to its permanent home and offered as affordable housing through agencies such as Habitat for Humanity.

Profits will cycle back into the program purchasing supplies and equipment for the next cohort -- establishing a self-sufficient model moving forward, said Bil Trainor of the GTTI and the Skilled Trades Institute chairperson.

“There’s a lot of people watching this model closely,” Trainor said. “There’s talk it could get cloned across the province.”

Tuition for the first year is free, but the program is capped at about 100 participants. Registration opens in the fall for a January 2021 start.

The program will offer training in eight sectors, including three regulated trades -- electrical, plumbing, residential HVAC, carpentry, roofing, flooring, drywall installation and cabinet making.

The multi-million-dollar project will see close to 70 houses completed in the first five years.

The town is fronting $2.6 million to help get the project off the ground and ready for the first batch of trade students starting in January 2021.

The $2.6 million will be used to build the new, 3-acre training campus located at 1614 Metro Rd. The campus will include two large construction domes and portable classrooms, allowing construction to continue year-round.

“There’s no disadvantage to winter students,” Trainor said. "We can build two bungalows simultaneously.”

The town’s portion will be financed through an Infrastructure Ontario loan and used to transform the empty field into a construction-training campus leased by GTTI over 15 years.

Not only will the lease result in a sizable return in the town’s favour, the community can expect to see a boost in local spending from accommodations to food and building supplies -- GTTI is estimating about $2 million will be spent annually in town between students and instructors.

The new program is run through SkillsOntario, connecting job-seekers with sector-specific employment and training. Through the SkillsAdvance Ontario program, the province is investing more than $4 million into the new construction training campus in Georgina.

The Skilled Trades Institute is one of 50 new training programs to recently get a boost in government funding. Five of those training programs are dedicated to help hoist the construction sector, which is in the midst of a national labour shortage.

And the answer is “unique to Georgina,” De Faveri said.

According to a Deloitte study commissioned by the GTTI, there is a large skilled trades labour shortage -- more than 100,000 additional workers will be needed by 2027 to keep up with residential construction projects.

That also includes the 87,000 current construction workers set to retire in the next decade or about 21 per cent of the current workforce.

The push toward skilled trades was a priority for the provincial government prior to the current COVID-19 situation, said Caroline Mulroney, York-Simcoe MPP and Transportation Minister.

Now, as most of the province is in recovery mode and a historically high number of Ontarians are unemployed, boosting the skilled trades is even more critical, Mulroney added.

“Getting back to work is part of the restart plan,” she said. “Construction did not shut down.”

Along with residential construction projects, residents can also expect to see transportation construction projects getting off the ground meaning more labourers will be needed, she added.

Not only will the new skilled trades training program pump out about 100 job-ready students, but the modular homes will also help fill the province’s affordable housing gap by partnering with agencies such as Habitat for Humanity.

“This model hasn’t been seen before,” Mulroney said. “It makes this project more exciting.”

Registration for the Skilled Trades Institute is set to open in the fall.