Builder
Billions of dollars can arrive after a hurricane. None of it rebuilds a house by itself.
Someone still has to remove the mold, repair the roof, replace the drywall, rewire the building, and make the neighborhood livable again.
Saket Soni has spent years focused on the people doing that work.
After Hurricane Katrina, Soni began organizing the largely itinerant workforce that travels from disaster to disaster. He later founded Resilience Force, an organization working to turn disaster recovery into a more stable, skilled, and dignified profession.
The work includes helping workers find jobs, receive training, recover unpaid wages, and avoid exploitation. Its larger ambition is to build a workforce capable of preparing communities before disasters as well as rebuilding them afterward.
That matters because disasters create a massive spike in construction demand precisely when local workers may themselves be displaced, housing is scarce, and the normal construction system is overwhelmed.
America is going to spend extraordinary amounts adapting to climate risk. Soni is focused on the people who will actually do the physical work.
Resilience is often discussed through the things we can see: levees, stronger buildings, floodwalls, wildfire technology, and restored infrastructure.
But those systems depend on people with the skills to build, operate, repair, and maintain them.
Resilience Force is trying to make that workforce less precarious and more permanent. Its work includes labor organizing, training, contractor partnerships, and efforts to create year-round resilience jobs rather than relying entirely on emergency employment after catastrophe.
Soni’s work is especially relevant to Building America because it expands the definition of a builder beyond the architect, developer, or founder. The workers rebuilding homes after a storm are part of the country’s physical capacity, even when their names never appear on the project.
The larger question is whether America can turn repeated disaster spending into a workforce that is better prepared for the next one.
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