Community discusses CTE housing project

Community members gathered at the Career and Technical Education (CTE) building last Wednesday evening to learn more about the CTE Community Housing Project that the Custer School District is launching. 
Superintendent of schools Dr. Tim Frederick said part of the vision for the program is to provide a way for students to gain authentic experiences while helping address a community need. Through the CTE Community Housing Project, students will build skills through real construction projects, develop relationships with local industry leaders and gain a sense of civic duty by supporting the community. 
“One of the issues that we have in the Black Hills region is affordable housing,” said Frederick. “That is why we’re here.”
The challenge is funding the program. Currently, the CTE Community Housing Project has roughly $12,400 in its fiscal sponsorship fund through the Black Hills Area Community Foundation (BHACF), and the goal is to raise roughly $300,000 to launch the project. The BHACF takes a flat two percent fee off the fund to pay its bills and provide future grants.
For the 2026-27 school year, the board of education designated $100,000 to the program as a curriculum expense to start the project. This will cover the costs of materials for the year. 
“We know that it might take some more next year,” said board member Heath Reindl. “We know in the ballpark where it’s going to be. We don’t know exactly. There’s a lot of trades that are willing to come in and do their thing for nothing.”
Through a partnership with the BHACF and the City of Custer, the houses built will be sold at an affordable price. Those funds will go back into the foundation where they will continue to grow in a money market investment account, financing the next house. 
The entire house is being built in the building and trades area of the CTE building. It is approximately 1,040 square-feet with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a combined kitchen and living room and a utility room. A garage or deck could easily be added to this model. 
“You look at these houses. You imagine little kids running around in these homes. This is a perfect house, perfect setup, wide open space for a starting family,” said Frederick. 
Primarily, the work is being done by the junior and senior class. Students have to get certified in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and preferably take a woodworking class before working on the house. 
Currently, two different classes of about 14 students each are working on the house during sixth and seventh period throughout the school year. The goal is to build a house every 18-to- 24 months. This timeline could change since it is a new project. 
An attendee asked if the program would continue if the current CTE instructors were to leave the district. 
To this, Reindl said, “It will keep going. We’ve got a lot of board support behind this, a lot of community support. Local contractors are involved with it. Everybody wants to see this succeed into the future.”
“A lot of local experts are overseeing everything to make sure it’s proper. We want a quality product going out this door,” said school board member Larry Baker. 
Everything will be inspected like a normal house, which is another benefit of working with industry leaders. 
“We’re gonna have the kids do as much as they can. There’s some things we want to be responsible for because our name is on it. So we’ll help with it, but we’re gonna let them do it just as much as we can. There might be a Friday that we come in, because when we’re working two hours a day, it takes forever to rough this in,” said Reindl. “Maybe some of the kids want to come in on Friday and just help us get a little more done just to keep moving.”
Frederick said the district’s property liability insurance covers the construction of the house. 
Looking at current estimates, Frederick said the expected cost of building the houses is a little over $250,000. This does not include the land, which is being gifted by the city. Mayor Bob Brown said nothing is written in stone yet, but the current location being discussed is at the corner of Gordon Street and Park Ave across from the dog park. These will potentially be long but narrow lots. 
However, the land will need to be developed to include streets, infrastructure and more. This could increase the cost by $40,000 to $50,000. Greg Litton, director of strategic housing with BHACF, said they are looking at ways to assist with that development. 
“That’s why we’re looking for partnerships in the community. That’s why we have a partnership with the city,” said Frederick. 
“So when it comes time to sell this house, will that be an auction or you take bids, and is there any way to require who buys it? I mean, it looks like a great house for a retired person. That’s not really who we want to build houses for,” said an attendee. 
Frederick said the district is working with industry partners to develop a plan for buyer eligibility and long-term affordability. 
Litton said legally there are two mechanisms for maintaining affordability over the long term—deed restrictions and covenants in the development. Through these methods, buyers could not sell the house a year later for $100,000 more than they paid for it. 
“The city would not be interested if you could go and double the money on it,” said Brown. 
Litton added that there are legal mechanisms for restricting potential buyers. These details will be worked through while the house is being built. The plan for selling the house is still being developed as well.
“We answer what we can, but we are also very transparent in telling you we don’t know yet. It’s something that we’re trying to figure out,” said Frederick. “There’s a lot of work, as you can see, that needs to be done in this house, but we will have a model that will be put in place.”
The hope is to provide housing for educators, healthcare professionals, emergency services and other essential workers to help sustain a strong local workforce. 
Eric Zimmer, vice president of philanthropy and special projects, also attended the meeting to share more about the BHACF. The BHACF is a 501(c)3 public charitable organization based in Rapid City that exists to make the seven-county region a stronger, better place for everyone in it. 
“We give grants to nonprofits. We facilitate dollars from donors directly to organizations and projects that they want to support,” said Zimmer. “We spend a lot of time working with nonprofits to work through strategic needs that they have, whether it’s fundraising questions, board governance issues, things like that. However, we can get under the hood and help nonprofits and other community stakeholders be in a good position to be successful and do the good work that they can. 
“We also try to play a leadership role. So we really think of ourselves as an organization that is of this place that cares deeply about it, that understands it, that’s invested in it, and we want to be on the front edge of solutions like this one that are about solving both immediate and long-range problems for the Black Hills.”
Officially, the BHACF mission is to “Lead solutions, give with purpose and thrive together.” 
“We’re the only organization of our kind with this many boots on the ground and people in community coming to events like this one, appreciating the place, loving it, and trying to engage,” said Zimmer. 
In the last 20 years, BHACF has grown to have $115 million in assets and reinvested $85 million back into the community. In 2025, the BHACF’s total community investment was $7.5 million.
Locally, BHACF manages the endowments for Growing Roots, Custer County Historical Society, Custer Ambulance Service, Custer Library Foundation and more. It also fiscally sponsored the West Dam restoration. 
“We’re down here in the area trying to be helpful in all these different ways,” said Zimmer. 
Additionally, the BHACF has a strategic housing revolving loan fund “where we make loans to developers to help make their capital stack make sense. They can afford to do development projects. That’s really taking off, and we’re currently in the process of working our way through $30 million in federal funding to expand that program throughout the entire Black Hills special projects,” said Zimmer. 
Part of Zimmer’s job is to “go around evangelizing the idea that we, as a community, need to get better at building up a culture around individual philanthropy and giving and getting comfortable asking our neighbors to step up and make visions like this one here at the CTE building come true.” 
In 2025, charitable giving in the United States totaled $617.2 billion. Sixty-four percent was from individual giving and 10 percent was from legacy giving. Only seven percent was from corporations and 19 percent from foundations. 
“Most nonprofits and community groups in the Black Hills have this pie chart flipped the wrong way. They spend 75 to 80 percent or more of their time asking businesses,” said Zimmer. “They do a lot of giving, but it doesn’t meet the full need.”
Based on information provided by Statistics Without Borders, Zimmer said people in the Black Hills are not giving at the same level in comparison to similar communities. Zimmer said in our current society, spending is easy, people are taught to save and no one knows how to give or the mechanisms to make charitable donations possible. 
“That’s where the community foundation can step in and help. We exist to help the Black Hills thrive, and the pathway to doing that is to help people understand, first, how they can make sense out of their own charitable giving, build a plan that makes sense for them and their family and their situation, and then understand the projects and organizations right in their community that could be the best fit for their charitable dollars. 
“The primary tool that we use to do this is called a donor advised fund (DAF). Think about it like a charitable checking account that lives at the community foundation. Any asset that you put into that fund, you get a tax deduction for. We work with you and your financial team to make a plan that makes sense. Then, you can grant dollars from that DAF to the CTE program, to your church, to the YMCA and any 501(c)3,” said Zimmer. 
Zimmer said only 17 percent of Americans have heard of DAFs. What’s more, if someone goes from writing checks to using a DAF, they will give twice as much over a longer time once they understand the capacity of what they have to give. The BHACF helps with this, along with setting up endowments and legacy giving. 
“We’re all here tonight because somebody asked you to show up and learn more about this program. My job is to help you understand how to give and say would you consider working with us to make this program a reality and asking other in the in the other people in the community who know who can make this happen,” said Zimmer.  “Just to boil it down, we’re here to help. We believe in this project. We want to assist.”
“This is an educational process. So you know we’re here at a school, and we’re talking about everybody learning. So we’re all going to learn from this, and this is the first experience with it. After that, we’ll have more knowledge,” said Custer City Council member Peg Ryan.