St. Joseph’s Carpenter Society opens East Camden job skills center and community hub

As it continues to rebuild East Camden’s housing stock, the St. Joseph’s Carpenter Society is adding vocational and job readiness services — and sharing expertise its has gained over the last 40 years.

Student interns, aspiring construction workers, and neighborhood residents who want to learn how to improve their own houses are welcome at the nonprofit’s new workforce training and community resource center at 29th and Federal Streets.

With $1 million in public and private funding, a former warehouse that was empty for six years has become the centerpiece of the faith-based nonprofit’s latest effort to bolster four East Camden neighborhoods.

“As we updated the master plan for East Camden in 2021, we saw how we were actually making a difference,” said Pilar Hogan, the society’s executive director since 2004. “We had blocks that were intact, with no vacant houses. So we began to think about what else East Camden needed to become a true neighborhood of opportunity.

“Residents told us loud and clear that they wanted a place where young people could learn skills to help them get better jobs.”

Hogan and leaders of other Camden nonprofits, as well as business owners and state, county, and city officials, turned out for the center’s April 10 ribbon-cutting.

Catering was by The Breakfast Palace, a few blocks east on Federal and one of a number of new businesses that have opened on the street in recent years.

“This center is great for East Camden and for the city,” Mayor Victor G. Carstarphen said. “Your organization sets the standard on how to have a positive impact.”

The center includes kitchen, bathroom, utility room, and basement areas for hands-on instruction in basic home maintenance and repair. Office space also is available for use by local contractors.

A trio of Camden Academy Charter High School seniors who call themselves the “Big Three” are the first interns in the skills training program.

“We learned to work as a team,” said Angel Lagares, who plans to attend a technical school after graduation.

“I’ve learned how to put up, spackle, and tape drywall,” said Geury Castellanos. “I want to do this kind of labor.”

Said Benjamin Muniz, who will become a paid intern at the center in the fall: “We wet locked the entire basement. We sealed it off from moisture.”

Technical or “hard” skills are not the sole focus of the training program, said Ruben Peres, project manager.

“Major employers in Camden have told us that while they can train people for specific jobs, sometimes [applicants] don’t have the ‘soft skills’ of communication and collaboration,” he said. “So we put more emphasis on those so that young adults can get their first job, and grow from there.”

The society was founded in 1985 by the late Msgr. Robert McDermott, pastor of St. Joseph’s Pro-Cathedral Parish, which has been an East Camden community anchor for generations.

McDermott, who died in 2019, grew up in the neighborhood. In a 2010 interview he said he founded the nonprofit after being “astounded by the number of abandoned homes” in East Camden.

Since then, the Carpenter Society has renovated or built 1,052 houses. More than 700 of those properties have been purchased by local residents and participants in the “Homebuyer’s Academy” to help individuals and families save, improve their credit, and otherwise prepare to become homeowners.

In the four East Camden neighborhoods the Carpenter Society serves — Marlton, Dudley, Stockton, and Rosedale — about 20% were vacant in the mid-1980s, said Hogan.

“About 16% to 17% were vacant in the late ’90s,” she said. The number of vacant units has since fallen to about 2%, Hogan told the audience at the grand opening.

Susan Catlett, neighborhood programs unit manager at the N.J. Department of Community Affairs, said she often cites the Carpenter Society’s efforts as an example of programs that get results.“We don’t pick favorites,” said Brad Harrington, the administrator for DCA’s neighborhood programs. “But they [the Carpenter Society] does exemplary work.”

Hogan said: “In the first 20 years, the Carpenter Society picked one thing — housing — and got really good at it.

“We will never step away from housing, but we have been looking at other things that go with better housing.”