Women in Construction

by Darius WilsonPosted on May 6, 2016 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Although women working in construction numbered just 1.2 percent of the entire U.S. workforce in 2013, an increasing number of construction industry vendors that we do business with are headed by women or employ women.

Our experience is apparently an anomaly: Government statistic show that while women have made significant gains in other male dominated fields, including jobs such as firefighting, the gains in the construction industry have been painfully slow over the past half century. The share of women in such construction jobs as brick mason (0.1%) and drywall installers (0.3%), for instance, pales in comparison to the percentage of women automotive service technicians (1.2%), according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The low numbers are surprising in an industry bursting with high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree or much in the way of brawn–now that power tools and heavy equipment machines do most of the grunt work. What’s more, there is even a Fort Worth, Texas-based trade group lobbying on behalf of women in construction.

I sat down with a few of our female vendors to find out how they got started and what, if any, obstacles they faced.

Lydia Martinez is operations director of P & J Cable Construction, which installed conduit for telecommunications cable at one of our properties.

Born in California, she moved to Mexico at the age of eight and returned to the U.S. when she became 18. She started supervising the installation of underground conduit after a construction owner struggled to communicate with his mostly Spanish speaking laborers. For the past 15 years she has run her own conduit installation business with her spouse. Martinez mostly handles business negotiation with clients and helps her husband supervise the foremen and laborers in the field.

Although Martinez said the career break left her “blessed to have a great situation that allows me to work and still spend quality time with my three girls,” she says her career rise has not been easy.

“Some people reject the notion of a woman giving orders to a group of guys even if it’s for a bigger cause,” Martinez said. “I’m at a point in my career where I understand the circumstances. I tend to hold my tongue about a lot of things because I know my actions have consequences that may affect potential business opportunities.”

Nevertheless, Martinez is optimistic about the future for women in construction: “Believe it or not, more and more women are becoming laborers in my line of work,” Martinez said. “The best advice I can offer women entering the field is to never get discouraged in the face of adversity. Men will look at you differently until they see you handle your business as a professional despite being a woman.”

Carolyn Brown, a ceramic tile installer, who has remodeled bathrooms and kitchens on our properties and who has worked in the construction industry for 26 years, entered the field after studying the trade in vocational school. Fresh out of school, she started her career out with a team of six men. However, within a few years Brown decided it was too much responsibility to manage such a large group so she started her own business laying ceramic tiles.

“Being from a small country town in North Carolina, I was always engaged in tasks with my hands” so I loved laying tile, said Brown. The key to success, she added, is to “simply love what you do and put your best foot forward.”

Spring Break

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on April 19, 2016 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

We will have a new post in May.

Ghost Tenants

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on March 8, 2016 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Nowhere is the nation’s affordable housing crisis more evident than in the rise of a phenomenon known as “ghost tenants,” or people attempting to live in government subsidized affordable housing, secretly, off lease.

At Spring Garden Apartments, the number of people caught in this illegal arrangement jumped to 10 last year from three in 2014 and just one in 2013.

The problem of “ghost tenants” is world wide and likely affects all types of apartments, as people double-up to save money on rent or take in a family member who has no place else to go. Though the problem is hard for landlords to spot and even more difficult to quantify, a recent article on Slate.com estimated that the actual “population living in New York City’s publicly owned housing units could be 25 to 50 percent larger” than the official count of 400,000 residents in the city’s public housing units.

The problem has been fueled by growing demand for affordable housing amid skyrocketing rents.

In Fairfax County, for instance, there are just 26 units of affordable housing for every 100 eligible extremely low income housing seekers, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research group.

Enterprise Income Verification, the main database tool that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires landlords to use to ensure that only qualified low income families are eligible for affordable housing, isn’t really helpful in catching ghost tenants since these tenant are off the books and never provide personal information that a landlord can check.

So catching ghost tenants often becomes a game of cat-and-mouse or happenstance.

Some ghost tenants are outted by the mail carrier questioning whether to leave mail for an unfamiliar name; others are caught by maintenance staff when they carry out apartment inspections or repairs.

But some residents, perhaps unaware that ghost tenancy is illegal, behave as if they are the official tenant. We have had several come in the rental office after being locked out of their unit, for instance, and ask for a front door key.

“Well let’s see, we don’t recognize your name; do you live here?” is our usual response, before a lease violation notice is sent to the official tenant.

Like other Section 8 housing complexes, rents at Spring Garden Apartments are based on income. So when an individual moves in or out, the household income is reassessed and the rent—which is 30 percent of total income—is adjusted accordingly.

In the end, ghost tenancy spooks the real tenant more than the “ghost.” Punishment, ranging from eviction or a big increase in rent, is more often levied against the official tenant, not the person living in the unit illegally.

Our 1st Anniversary

by Darius WilsonPosted on February 9, 2016 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

It’s been nearly a year since the inception of this blog. So I thought we’d take a look back at what we have shared with our readers and what our readers have shared with us.

Since our first blog post on March 16, 2015, we’ve discussed topics ranging from solar energy and homelessness to the widening of Richmond Highway and the regulatory policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Although the posts in this space are what some might call a “group” blog, where I share writing responsibilities with the president of Shiver Management Group, Jube Shiver, Jr., it has, on occasion, been a very personal experience for me.

Take my post on homelessness.

The personal struggle my family and I had with homelessness when we first moved to Alexandria, Virginia 20 years ago was the first time I had talked about the experience on social media. The blog post drew the highest number of comments from our readers. Many of the comments were heartwarming, with one poster saying, “this story is appreciated and (is) truly an inspiration.”

Over the past year, the “literally homeless” population has decreased in the Washington, D.C. area, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Nevertheless, I think we, as a community, must continue to raise awareness to combat homelessness.

Another public policy issue that we addressed was Jube Shiver’s post about vehicle traffic and pedestrian safety along Richmond Highway or Route 1.

The post drew a comment from Virginia State Sen. Scott A. Surovell, who said that “the 44th District averages double the pedestrian fatalities” than the rest of Virginia, on average. He added that if “U.S. 1 is going to be a thriving, safe and vibrant community,” policy makers and citizens need to keep the pressure on to make improvements to the highway as well as address alternative means of transportation.

According to Embark Richmond Highway, widening of the Route 1 will consist of six lanes and a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service, which is currently in the planning stage. Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) expects the $180 million, 3.68 mile segment of Richmond Highway from Telegraph Road to Mount Vernon Highway to be completed by 2020 and the BRT to be completed by 2026, which would be significant progress.

On the other hand, some of our blog posts triggered little response, despite raising what we believed were significant public policy concerns.

For instance, Julián Castro, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, told Jube Shiver in a March 2015 meeting that his staff would review what Shiver called an “unconscionable” HUD rule that barred college students younger than 24 from subsidized housing unless they had dependent children or were military veterans.

We never heard back from HUD and the college student ban remains.

Similarly, our blog post on solar energy was one of only two columns that drew no comments.

However, Sen. Surovell continues to work hard on solar.

Last month, he joined with several members of the Virginia House and introduced a bill that would require the State Corporation Commission to encourage so-called “community solar gardens,” where businesses or home owners share a solar array with grid-connected subscribers and receive financial credits, at discounted rates, on utility bills from the energy generated by the shared solar facilities. The measure supported by Surovell would additionally provide low income homeowners the opportunity to participate in these shared solar arrays.

Finally, we want to express our thanks to Verizon Communications, which responded quickly to last month’s blog accusing the company of dragging its feet for nearly a decade on installing cable TV and high speed Internet service at Spring Garden Apartments. After the blog appeared, Verizon crews worked nearly around the clock to install the service. As a result, Verizon’s cable TV and high speed Internet service, known as FIOS, is now available to all 207 families at Spring Garden Apartments and company officials are scheduled to talk to residents about the service in a tenant meeting later this month.

With a new blog being created in the world every second, according to Andrew Keen, author of the book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture,” I was skeptical about what impact we might have from our small soapbox on the Internet. But that sentiment has faded over this past year in the wake of the positive and thought-provoking feedback we have receive from you, our readers.

Over the coming year, we look to increase and improve communications with our tenants, vendors and homeowner communities. Thank you for your support and stay tune for future postings!

The red line that won’t fade

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on January 6, 2016 Posted in Uncategorized — 1 Comment ↓

Please see our February 2016 blog post for an update

A few months after Fairfax County gave Verizon approval in October 2005 to offer cable TV and Internet service in the county, a company representative visited my office and excitedly told me Verizon would be rolling out more than 300 cable channels and high speed Internet access in our area as soon as the summer of 2006.

Verizon did rollout fiber-optic broadband internet access, which it calls Fios, within inches of our apartment complex, which is located right off Richmond Highway, a main regional thoroughfare. But it never provided service to the mostly poor black and Latino residents that live in the apartment complex, although it hopes to do so this year.

Our experience with Verizon mimics that of poor and minority consumers in Newark, NJ, where tens of thousands of low-income households don’t have access to Verizon’s high-speed internet service, allegedly because of a loophole in state law that permits the communications company to withhold service when it claims it can’t gain access to the property.

Verizon has said that in New Jersey, many landlords voluntarily opted-out of Fios service and chose other broadband and cable TV providers.

In our case, we were eager to have Fios service. And Verizon initially seemed interested in providing it—that is, until they visited our site. What’s more, the company appears legally bound to provide such service to all Fairfax County residents.

In a 2006 filing with the Federal Communications Commission, for example, Fairfax County’s Office of Consumer Affairs stated that the country’s “three franchise agreements guarantee that deployment of competitive cable services and any upgrades of existing cable systems will be made available to all households within a franchise area.” When the county granted Verizon a franchise in 2005, it gave the communications giant seven years to build out its system in the county.

On December 15, 2015 I called and sent an email to Richard J. Young, Verizon’s director of external communications and media relations, seeking comment about why it has taken so long for Verizon to provide service to our site and also to enlist his help in speeding up the installation of Fios on our site. He did not respond.

Verizon only showed interest in wiring Spring Garden Apartments about three years ago after I called a friend of mine, who had been Verizon’s former government lobbyist. Within months, the company had engineers visit Spring Garden and had a site plan approved.

Since then, things have bogged down. We have had conduit and cable installed for Fios service. But the service has not been turned on and Verizon has not indicated when that might occur.

Having competitive broadband service is not just a matter of status and convenience, especially for poor consumers. The General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) stated in a 2003 report that “cable prices were as much as 15% lower in areas in which incumbent cable operators faced head-to-head competition from another wireline cable provider.” What that means is that while most Fairfax County residents have enjoyed the benefits of price competition between Verizon and the county’s other cable TV provider, Cox Communications, poor people at Spring Garden Apartments have not benefited from that competition for the last decade.

The practice of banks and other institutions circumventing black and Latino communities in favor of predominantly white neighborhoods, is called “redlining” and is often spoken of in the past tense. It is seen as a disparaged practice of a long-forgotten bygone era. But it takes vigilance to make sure the battles for equality our society thinks it has won, stay won. And we need to insure that lawmakers, regulators and businesses alike, embrace that view.

Season’s Greetings

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on December 1, 2015 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

We hope you are enjoying the holiday season. Our next post will be in January.

Energizing Virginia

by Darius WilsonPosted on November 10, 2015 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Due to passage of the federal solar Investment Tax Credit and improvements in manufacturing panels that capture energy from the sun, solar power costs have decreased significantly nationwide. However, here in Virginia, communities have yet to benefit.

That could slowly begin to change as a result of an August 7, 2015 decision by the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) that allows qualified Virginia consumers to purchase renewable energy from the state’s major utility company, Dominion Power.

The good news is that Dominion will build a 2-megawatt solar facility and add the newly produced electricity to the distribution grid, under a program called Dominion Community Solar. The bad news is that some of the state’s electrical users will have to pay for the plant. The aim is to eventually lower electric costs which rose 3.1% nationally last year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Under the program, Dominion will resell solar power generated by its new plant to consumers and businesses in 100 kilowatt chunks, for approximately $4 per month. Each consumer or business will be allowed to purchase up to 400 kilowatts of energy.

Prior to the decision, there were few, if any, incentives for property owners to use solar energy in Virginia. That’s because unlike states such as Maryland, that supplement the federal government’s solar tax credit program with state incentives, Virginia does not provide direct solar subsidies to individuals or businesses.

Of course anyone in Virginia can install a solar system on their home or business and reduce their reliance on the power grid. We’ve been thinking about doing that at Shiver Management Group before an expected reduction of the federal solar tax credit by the end of 2016. But in Virginia, solar system sizes are capped at 20 kilowatts for residences and 500 kilowatts for business.

So while the SCC’s ruling is a small step forward, it is unlikely to spur widespread adoption of solar energy in the Commonwealth.

That’s a disappointment to Scott Surovell, the newly elected state senator from Virginia’s 36th district.

“Dominion’s program is a great advance that will provide consumers with more choices and the ability to choose less-polluting, renewable energy,” said Surovell, who has long been an ardent proponent of renewable energy.

But he added that he believes the best way of spurring wider adoption of renewable energy is “allowing groups of individuals or businesses to do this independently,” through financial and policy incentives.

William’s Way

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on October 2, 2015 Posted in Uncategorized — 3 Comments ↓

After we became friends while attending college in upstate New York, my best man and fellow real estate developer, William D. Manns Jr., would always introduce me as: “Jube Shiver, the only person I know who has a street named after him.”

In truth, “Shiver Drive” and “Jube Court” in Fairfax County, Virginia are named for my late father, Jube Shiver, Sr., who also was a real estate developer. William knew that, but he still delighted in introducing me as someone singular—always pausing, for effect, to add: “do you know anybody with a street named after them?”

The answer to that question is now “yes” for everyone who knew William.

On September 29, nearly seven years after William succumbed to cancer, about 100 of his friends, dignitaries and other New Jersey residents gathered in downtown Newark to dedicate a street to the beloved lawyer, real estate developer and Renaissance man.

William earned the honor by mentoring scores of New Jersey’s youth, building a distinguished and potent law practice and developing the largest real estate project ever built by an African-American in the City of Newark—the Nevada Court Mall.

In an event organized by the tireless efforts of William’s wife Emily Winslow and family friend Renee Greenleaf-Shaw, dozens of people including former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, City Councilwoman Gayle Chaneyfield Jenkins, and William’s longtime friend and business partner Ruben Johnson watched, applauded and cheered as “William Manns Jr. Way” was affixed to the top of a street pole on Louise Epperson Plaza.

According to the Newark City Clerk’s office, the one-way street will now have a dual name, that of William as well as Epperson, a Newark community activist.

William, too, was a community activist and force of nature. He was always counseling, consoling, teaching and fighting for his friends and clients. He represented the dispossessed as well as the famous, such as the late poet/play writer Amiri Baraka, the father of current Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Newark attorney Maurice Snipes, who calls himself William’s adopted son, credits William with rescuing him from the streets of Newark and mentoring him through law school. But William also made time to write poetry, listen to his collection of blues records or party the night away in a city that he unabashedly loved.

He was particularly proud of joining with famed criminal defense lawyers Johnnie Cochran and Barry Scheck to bring a number of lawsuits against the State of New Jersey for racially profiling black motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike during the 1990s.

A friend of mine and I were among the victims of that practice: on a December day in the mid-1990s—en route to New York to go Christmas shopping–a New Jersey state trooper ordered us to pull over. The trooper proceeded to search my friend’s red Mercedes Benz coupe, without any legitimate probable cause that we could think of nor, as it turned out, that the trooper could articulate.

“You looked like you might have been carrying drugs in that type of car,” he said before letting us go.

Years later, after telling William about that stop, he told me I was lucky my police encounter didn’t end more tragically. He had represented people who had been shot at or severely injured after being stopped by state troopers.

Indeed, William was always fond of tempering tragedy or misfortune by quoting a line of his poetry that read: “Still, the river flows.” The line had a dual meaning to me: that life goes on but that the river—and real life—carve out new paths, over time.

Back to School Respite

by Jube Shiver JrPosted on September 14, 2015 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

We are off this month. Hope everyone enjoyed their summer. Our regular blog posts will return in October.

Across the Pond…

by Darius WilsonPosted on August 7, 2015 Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Last Spring, I traveled to London, Paris, and Amsterdam for vacation but also managed to spend some time comparing U.S. housing to homes that folks live on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

First stop London. I was fortunate enough to stay at a friend’s “flat”, which is the equivalent of an apartment in the United States. The unit was very compact, living space-wise. In addition, its heating system and appliances were very energy efficient, compared to most apartments in the U.S.

To maximize the use of space, for instance, the flat had a stacked washer and dryer unit instead of separate, freestanding, washer and dryer units. The flat also had a “tankless” water heater to provide on-demand hot water and eliminate the huge 80 gallon water heater typically found in most American homes. What’s more, the flat’s windows fully rotated or flipped to allow cleaning of the outside glass from inside the unit.

In one curious way, however, Europeans are expansive in the use of space when it comes to bathrooms: the flat’s toilet, for instance, was partitioned off from the rest of the bathroom for privacy and unlike most American homes, even many non-luxury homes in Europe have a bidet in addition to a toilet. What’s more, many European bathrooms I saw typically had a hot and cold shower and/or bathtub knobs instead of the single lever faucet control found in many newer American homes.

After experiencing the British lifestyle, I took a day trip to Paris. Paris was everything I had expected and more. The neoclassical architectural style was captivating and remarkable. From the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre, the scenery was beautiful and serene.

As a person who is fascinated by intricate designs, I was intrigued by the conceptual designs behind some of the city’s illustrious structures. For instance, the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, which translates to the Arch of Triumph of the Star, is a staggering 162 feet tall gateway, aligned strategically in the heart of the Place Charles de Gaulle. The Arch was definitely the highlight of my day trip in Paris.

The last destination of my European voyage was Amsterdam, a city in The Netherlands. Exploring Amsterdam’s canals, bicycle paths and other transportation infrastructure was a journey in itself. The houses along the canal were small and narrow but still managed to create visual interest. Also, this is the city of bicycles. They are everywhere and often outnumber cars on the road.

While American homes—especially those in newer “sunbelt” cities in the South and West—often seem built for a market that values spaciousness and amenities like garages, central air-conditioning and garbage disposals, many older European structures lack such bells and whistles. Nevertheless, European housing appears to satisfy the needs and lifestyles of our neighbors across the pond and could provide a blueprint for greater energy efficiency in U.S. homes.