Member News: Wells Fargo Volunteer Day Targets Impact at Scale with Student-Built Modular ADUs 

Wells Fargo Volunteer Day Targets Impact at Scale with Student-Built Modular ADUs 

On October 3, 2024, at San Rafael High School, roughly ten local Wells Fargo employees will swap their spreadsheets for hardhats to help build a new model for affordable housing. Darlene Goins, the President of the Wells Fargo Foundation, will lead the group of bankers to support Rebuilding Together East Bay Network’s workforce program, Big Skills, as they create valuable affordable housing to benefit Marin residents. 

From 1-5pm, the Wells Fargo volunteers will be lightening the workload of 48 high school students and six workforce development trainees who have committed to completing the construction of two small home accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The Big Skills Program, operated by construction nonprofit Rebuilding Together East Bay Network, has been working on a scalable solution to the housing crisis by combining workforce development and affordable housing since 2019. This year, the program has expanded from San Rafael High School to run at its second Marin County high school, and is well-positioned to replicate in other communities throughout the Bay Area. 

“Our program is structured to be a triple-threat, providing an asset that stabilizes existing communities against displacement, building accessible housing where it's needed, and giving students a comprehensive construction-learning experience,” said Danielle Faulkner, Big Skills’ Senior Program Manager. High school students receive 140 Career Technical Education hours alongside a team of six young adult “Learning Leaders” receiving 600 hours of professional workforce development training in the skilled trades over the course of a school year. In addition to the output of valuable training and professional navigation, every school site produces two units of affordable housing stamped by the state of California that costs a fraction of most ADUs on the market. These units are then placed in the backyards of local low-income homeowners. “We’re not satisfied unless every aspect of the program actively provides value to the people and places we want to uplift,” said Faulkner. 

The Big Skills Program is working with the Marin Housing Authority to locate families to receive a no-cost or subsidized ADU installed on their property. In spite of San Rafael’s recently reported median household income of nearly $125,000 per year, there remain pockets in the county like the Canal Area where stubborn generational poverty persists and under-resourced families struggle to stay in their communities. 

To address this disparity of opportunity, Rebuilding Together is partnering with Canal Alliance to provide Canal residents a pathway to high-road jobs and career advancement. This year, Julio, a San Rafael High School alum interested in becoming an electrician, and Theo, a Haitian immigrant with experience in concrete construction, are Big Skills Learning Leaders thanks to referrals by Canal Alliance. Through this partnership, Rebuilding Together is providing living-wage scholarships for Julio and Theo, with Canal Alliance acting as case managers and providing two years of wraparound support and services beyond the ten months in the Big Skills program. 

Much like the custom convertible furniture built into the ADUs, the Big Skills program serves the community in multiple ways, which is exactly the type of intentional philanthropy that Wells Fargo Foundation President, Darlene Goins, looks for in projects as head of Philanthropy and Community Impact. “From decades in the financial sector, we know starting a business, building credit and savings, owning a home are all proven paths toward wealth,” Goins, who is the first Black woman to be named president of Wells Fargo Foundation, said. “Before 2019, Wells Fargo used to fund all kinds of community needs – I like to say a mile wide and an inch deep,” Goins said. With its new focus on the priorities of “supporting access to affordable homes and keeping people housed, financial health, and sustainability,” Wells Fargo has chosen to support Big Skills as ground-zero in its mission to, according to Goins, “use philanthropy as a catalyst to try new ideas and prove they work.” 

Beyond creating the pathways for good-paying jobs and affordable housing construction, the Big Skills program also works closely with Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services to incorporate its great services providing education to first-time home buyers and training the next generation of community developers. “Everything that we've done has really looked to solve issues related to the place and space that we sit in,” said Nikki Beasley, Executive Director of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, who created the Emerging Developers training program to provide field experience for early career black and BIPOC developers she found was otherwise inaccessible. This work ensures that real estate development acumen is passed through to the next generation of local lived-experience residents. In addition, the Coalition for Home Repair, a national organization that preserves affordable housing through home repair has been a thought partner and advisor to the Big Skills program as it builds towards the ambitious but achievable goal of bringing meaningful impact to our housing crisis. 

Rebuilding Together East Bay Network has a long track record in the Bay Area of spearheading initiatives that repair homes and uplift communities. “Rebuilding Together has really seen our role to be the connection point between our most vulnerable neighbors and the local service organizations and public agencies driven to support them,” said JW Frye, Executive Director of Rebuilding Together East Bay Network. With support from Wells Fargo, Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, Canal Alliance, and Coalition for Home Repair, among other partners in attendance on October 3rd, Big Skills is reshaping conversations about our housing crisis. 

Press is invited to cover the build day. High school students will not be present and attendees will be notified that photography and video footage will be captured. Notable attendees include: 

• Darlene Goins, Head of Philanthropy and Community Impact, President of Wells Fargo Foundation 
• Nikki Beasley, Executive Director, Richmond Neighborhood Housing Inc. 
• Freyja Harris, Executive Director, Coalition for Home Repair 
• JW Frye, Executive Director, Rebuilding Together East Bay Network 

Building the Future, 10/3/24 1- 5pm, agenda: 

• 1 - 1:30pm - Speeches 
• 1:30 - 3:30pm - Construction work lead by Big Skills staff 
• 3:30 - 4pm - Cleanup 
• 4 - 5pm - Closing remarks, celebration with catered food 

This volunteer event will lead to a cascade of storylines in the weeks and months ahead as we follow the paths of these homes from construction to installation in Marin. Who will receive the homes? How will they be placed and financed? How will the ADUs change the lives of the families who acquire them and the renters who occupy them? How will this program be scaled to meet the supply shortfall of our critical affordable housing demands? Follow the story as it unfolds.