Instructor Alan Wheeler, right, teaches students how to screw together floor joists as they build a small house during a construction education class at Redmond High School. The house will become part of the Oasis Village in Redmond.  

REDMOND — During Alan Wheeler’s construction technology class at Redmond High School on Thursday, Jan. 5, the school’s workshop was buzzing with activity as a group of students learned new skills and began assembling a transitional housing unit for Redmond’s houseless community.

The class was the beginning of a six-week program in collaboration with Parr Lumber and Hayden Homes to teach the students how to build a home using a cutting-edge technology developed by Parr Lumber called Opti-Frame. At the end of the program, the students will have successfully built a transitional housing unit for Oasis Village in Redmond, and also gained new skills in the construction industry.

One of the goals of the program is to pique young people’s interest in the construction industry, and to help address the region’s labor shortage and housing crisis. It is also meant to foster relationships with the community through such programs, something the school district hopes to do more of.

During Wheeler’s class, students were trained by professionals from Parr Lumber and Hayden Homes in using Opti-Frame, which makes building a home simpler and more akin to an assembly process. The students appeared to be engrossed in what they were doing, and some said the class has raised their interest in possibly pursuing construction as a career.

Chloe Haavisto, a junior at Redmond High School, was meticulously assembling the frame for the housing unit with her classmates.

“Taking this class gives me more of a hands-on, because I found out that is the way I learn,” Haavisto said. “I’m also interested in the trades after high school and college.”

Haavisto’s plan after high school is to first go to Central Oregon Community College for two years before possibly going into the U.S. Air Force, she said. She said she enjoys working with her hands and built her own treehouse and also spent time working on boats with her father.

“I want to do COCC for two years because that will get me my (technical education) in mechanics, electrical, and then I can get my associates degree in psychology as something to fall back on in case I don’t love the trades as much,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out which of the trades I’m best at, or if I want to do more than one, and what I can make money off of,” Haavisto said.

Mason Moore, a 10th grader, said he has wanted to be an electrician for some time, but would consider the construction industry as a second option. His goal is to eventually do an apprenticeship of some kind.

Moore said he is enjoying the construction project and that the Opti-Frame technology makes the process rather approachable.

“The way they are kind of having us think about it, we are trying to think about it as like a big Lego set,” Moore said. “We are following instructions to build a house rather than cutting out our pieces and having a lot more mess ups.”

Charan Cline, the superintendent of the Redmond School District, said the district offers several different programs focused on technical training. He said the school’s programs are designed to focus students on real-world experience and job training for positions where there is high demand. A decade or so prior, he said, society had a rather different idea of where jobs and the economy were going.

“The United States was having this idea that more or less, we’re going to outsource most of the labor. And we’re going to sort of think for the world, only to find out that there’s lots of people that need to build your cars and work on mechanics and plumb houses and build houses. And a lot of those folks are all retiring right now,” Cline said. “So there’s a huge amount of market gap in society for the work that needs to be done really, if you will, technical work. ”

Cline said the construction class and other programs like it are designed to provide a number of different avenues for technically inclined students, which can lead students into a wide variety of careers.

Levi Means, regional sales manager at Parr Lumber, took part in the class helping train the students on the Opti-Frame technology. His hope is that once the course is complete, more young people will consider the industry.

“Most teenagers don’t view homebuilding as very romantic. It’s probably not very high up on the list of ‘what do I want to do when I grow up,’ but it is an amazing industry with a lot of great people, and it’s rewarding. And what we do is we provide shelter,” Means said.

Deborah Flagan, vice president of community engagement with Hayden Homes, was also in Wheeler’s class.

“The state of Oregon has put together a goal of building 584,000 homes between now and 2040, to deal with the housing crisis in the state, and to be able to support this … we need to have approximately 13,000 construction workers,” Flagan said.

Flagan said the industry has had a tough time finding labor for the past few years, and she’d encourage young people to consider construction as a career.

“The wages are consistent for our area median income, so these are good paying jobs, and we are excited to get people that are interested in the industry and see something new that is happening,” Flagan said. “There is a huge opportunity for them that they can see at the end of the day, something that they have actually accomplished, which you can when you are building a house.”

Redmond High School’s collaboration with Hayden Homes, Parr Lumber and Oasis Village and other programs like it are part of a broader effort statewide to help develop the construction workforce to address Oregon’s lack of housing.

State Rep.-elect Emerson Levy, D-Bend, who will represent state House District 53 starting Monday, is an advocate for construction workforce development, and supports programs like the one at Redmond High School.

“Construction jobs, like the program at Redmond High, gives students early exposure to good wage jobs that don’t come with college debt. Additionally, our economy needs to build up our workforce, especially in Central Oregon,” Levy said.