William (Bill) Wells is the Facilities Manager for Napa Valley Community Housing (NVCH), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop, preserve, and manage affordable homes. Through their Resident Services Program, NVCH also teaches successful life and leadership skills.
Bill has 15 years of experience in new construction, facilities, project management and estimating, and tenant improvement. Before joining NVCH, Bill worked as the Capital Manager for Burbank Housing, the Project Manager for Imperial Contracting, and the Assistant Superintendent for CalAtlantic Homes.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Bill Wells, Greg Owens, and Katrina Stephenson talk about their backgrounds and relocation to California
- Bill discusses how he got started in facilities management
- The rising cost of living in California — and how Napa Valley Community Housing (NVCH) is providing affordable options
- How have the fires in California affected the facilities management industry?
- The impact of current restrictions on homeowners and facilities management employees
- Bill’s advice for anyone looking to get started in the industry: gain experience and exposure before you hit the job market
- The importance of seeking training — even after you’ve been hired
- Bill talks about upcoming opportunities that he’s excited about
In this episode…
The pandemic, California wildfires, and other natural disasters have made companies and their employees learn to adapt. This is especially true for the facilities management industry, whose employees have learned to work under stringent restrictions, continue efforts with limited materials, and prepare for future hardships. So, how is the facilities management industry continuing to benefit communities despite these circumstances? And how can you get your start in the industry?
As a facilities manager, Bill Wells is providing stability for families in Napa Valley through an affordable housing service. According to Bill, your role is more than just a title: you should always be working towards growth for yourself, your company, and your community. The key to doing so? Seek out training and education — even after you’ve been hired.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens sits down with Bill Wells, Facilities Manager for Napa Valley Community Housing (NVCH), to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the facilities management industry. Bill talks about his experience building community outreach, the future of the housing market, and how you can start — and develop — a career in the facilities management industry. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Bill Wells on LinkedIn
- Napa Valley Community Housing (NVCH)
- Napa Valley Community Housing on Facebook
- Jocko Podcast
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
Hello, everyone. This is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we’ve been interviewing facilities, managers, property owners, contractors, and sort of anybody related in the field of buildings, industry, construction and that sort of thing. It is almost May, which is unbelievably it’s going by super fast, things feel good. Everything’s opening up more and more and more, and that feels like a good thing out there. I think people are getting more relaxed and it’s wonderful to see people enjoying life out outdoors as spring comes. Full Tilt. This podcast is brought to you by McCarthy Painting. It’s my company it was started by my uncle Fred McCarthy in 1969. Here in Marin County, I started working for him when I was 16 years old. It wasn’t very good at high school and then started painting and but back then it was Fred and I painting it wasn’t it was a little bit different than and now we do projects throughout the whole entire San Francisco Bay area, including doing projects like Chase Bank, Autodesk Spin Zooks and what else have we done some retail stores like h&m, Abercrombie and Fitch and many many others. If you’d like to know more about the painting type of painting we do. You can go to us info@McCarthypainting.com or go to the website McCarthypainting.com and check us out. And I’m super excited to have Bill Wells from he’s the facilities manager for the Napa Valley Community Housing and I’ve also gotten the opportunity to go out and see these apartments recently and their beautiful apartments in both Napa I like that section and Napa where they’re where they’re located where I met with you out there it was that was an interesting part of Napa that I hadn’t been to down that long road I don’t remember the name of the road and then also Yachtville and Yachtville’s just extraordinary. Yeah,
William Wells 2:40
we’ve got properties from from Napa up to St. Helena and it’s a it’s a nice drive when I have to go up the valley to St. Helena to take in the scenery. And, you know, the the wineries the vineyard views hot air balloons in the morning. It’s It’s nice.
Greg Owens 2:55
Yeah, did you grew up in that in that area.
William Wells 2:59
I grew up over in Sonoma County where I still live over in West Sonoma County, kind of tomales Bay, that area,
Greg Owens 3:05
right. And I didn’t grow up in this area. I grew up in New York, and then came out here when I was 16 years old. But I but I’m always blown away. When I drive like over the Golden Gate Bridge. Or when I I drive up the Yachtville and I’m just like, oh my god, I can’t believe Yeah, I work here and live here. And I come and see these things. Does that happen to you? It does. You
William Wells 3:26
know, sometimes I get jaded. I spent a lot of time in previous jobs where my commute was all you know, from from Nevada, where our office was down to as far as Salinas. So do you see these things day in and day out for six hours a windshield time a day? And then you kind of start to get worn out by it, you don’t see it? And then what happened? Well, I remember one time I must have been almost 15 years ago, I was looking at a job out of state. And I was offered a I had an interview in, in, in Idaho. So I flew to Idaho with my wife and kids for this job interview. And it was January, and it was northern Idaho at a ski resort that they were building and went there, you know, check out the project and we came back and it was January. And I remember my wife and I were out on a tennis court over in Sonoma County clay we’re talking you know, do we want to take this job do we want to pursue or do we want to do and I said, you know, it’s it’s a nice opportunity but tennis courts in January in northern Idaho in half. And and you know, sometimes there’s eye opening experiences like that, or I’ll have friends that live across the country. Tell me I’m coming out and you know, I’m planning in two years to come out. I can’t wait now. Yeah, this is a this is a tourist destination. That’s right.
Greg Owens 4:41
Yeah, that’s, that’s so true. And I forgot to mention to that on the podcast with us as Katrina Stephenson, who also chimes in she works for McCarthy Painting and has questions and things along those lines and I was also spend some time in Idaho and probably would not move back there.
Katrina Stephenson 5:00
Yeah, actually thank thank you for the intro. I actually was just thinking the same thing as a transplant here from I’m from North Carolina originally. And it’s so beautiful. Like where you live is one of my favorite places to just go all day. It’s like
William Wells 5:15
part Idaho where
Katrina Stephenson 5:16
I was in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I was there for like three or four months.
Greg Owens 5:22
And it’s a beautiful and it’s a beautiful part of Idaho. Right, but it does
Katrina Stephenson 5:25
look beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it was cold. Canada,
Katrina Stephenson 5:31
I mean, I’ve never been to Canada, but
William Wells 5:33
like, I made it out of California. One time when I was about 20 years old, I took a job up in Portland. And I started that job in late springtime and was working for a company that did asphalt grading, grading and excavating, started in late spring, and I made it till I made it till not quite the end of October.
When the rain started in the fall, I said, Oh, wait a minute. Nobody, nobody told me it was quite like this and hightailed it back to California.
Greg Owens 6:04
I looked at that, like 15 years ago, because, you know, I realized California was getting more and more expensive at the time. And I was like, oh, maybe I should, like, you know, do something in a different state and do something more reasonable, right. It’s so crazy expensive here. And, and, and so I looked at Portland because I really liked the City of Portland. But then I talked to some friends that live there. And they talked about their winners and how much it rains and how dark it gets. And I was like, boy, with my mentality not seeing the sun and not being able to enjoy the outdoors. And that way it would, that would be tough.
William Wells 6:38
And now these areas like Idaho, Texas, the Pacific Northwest and areas, they’re just extensions of California, if you’re looking to get away from from California, yeah, you know,
just Idaho was just California east. That’s it. Totally colder.
Greg Owens 7:00
Right. Right. And so I mean, I know the How did you get your start in this? I know you did. Like you work for construction companies. And you’ve sounds like you’ve done different types of jobs within construction companies.
William Wells 7:15
I am the Forrest Gump of facilities managers. Go through my way, if you if you’ve ever seen that just things fall into place and happen. I started my career as a as a an assistant superintendent, I started as a prep and detail guy working for standard Pacific Homes, and I moved up from prep and detail to an assistant superintendent. And I worked on a big project in American Canyon, about 800 homes or that’s like one of those big development there the contract that developers are they’re all in right. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And there they were nationwide. They’ve been bought out a few times since I left. And I made it till about 2006 2006 or eight. I can’t remember when the when the economy, you know, took a took a nosedive in the bottom fell out of the housing industry. And from there I went, I went to a general contractor who did mostly capital improvement work for large multifamily companies like United Dominion and VRE, and those kinds of things. So I was working as a project manager and estimator, superintendent, you know, everything for this for a company out in Nevada, and it was great commuting to Salinas. I was commuting, I saw my I had this alternating commute where I would oversee jobs because because they were in several markets. That company was they had they had offices in Seattle offices in the bottle offices in Irvine and offices and in Phoenix. And so my commute one week I would get in my car and I would drive from our Nevada office Monday night I would stop in Salinas. Tuesday night I would stop in Santa Maria. Wednesday Night. I’d stop in in in San Bernardino, all the way down by LA and then I turn around Thursday, I’d hit Salinas Friday and make it home then the then the next week, I would hop on a plane and I’d go to Vegas. No not not. Not for fun. Not Not for. Yeah, yeah, we had several projects. So we didn’t have a we didn’t have an office out there. We had a lot of projects that I oversaw. So it was like alternating weeks where I was 100% travel for for almost six years there. And that just kind of kind of burned me out with with young kids. And so from from there, I told my wife I’m done with the done with the travel and went into nonprofit work as a capital improvements manager working under a facilities manager for five years and I watched him and that was a company much like I work at now a nonprofit that builds and maintains affordable housing over in Sonoma County. And I watched I watched that facilities manager I you know, I studied his job. He taught me an awful lot, but there just wasn’t the wasn’t the room to get to go upward. So I took this job here at Napa Valley Community Housing as the facilities manager.
Greg Owens 10:08
And I was wondering about that with Napa Valley Community Housing. So it’s a it’s a Community Housing, it’s a nonprofit organization, and they supply in lower income housing in places. Yeah. Not real and not but we’re we’re also the prices have gone skyrocket.
William Wells 10:24
Yeah, yeah. Correct. Yeah. It’s it’s a nonprofit, they build maintain, they do fee management, development, you know, development fee stuff, but it’s it is focused on affordable housing for for the community. We have farm worker, we have some units set aside for farm workers that are that are just your mark for that for folks who work in the agriculture industry and in the vineyards. Yeah. So it runs the gamut of all all affordable housing. And you know, that the the term we try to get away from in this industry is low income, because because, you know, what’s, what’s low income in the middle of Nebraska, is, you know, is not low income in this area. And a lot of the people that that we are housing are, you know, the Bay Area standards, we might say low income, but it’s, you know, we really try to use the word affordable, because some of these folks are, you know, when you think of low income, you’re thinking of government subsidies, and there is that in involved in it. But now you’re thinking of people, there’s this kind of a stigma of welfare cases and stuff. And that is not not the case. These are hardworking folks that that have the that have the, I don’t know, I don’t want to say the misfortune of living in Napa. It’s a beautiful place to live and work. But we all have the misfortune of dealing with the rising cost of living here. So we really try to use you know, affordable housing is, is the term that we
Greg Owens 11:43
that we like, Yeah, and I think a lot of times, it’s very, like trying to keep like the police force it living in the community, or the fire department living in a community or teachers living in the community where they’re not, they love their jobs, they love their careers that just that the area’s gotten so expensive. It’s hard for them to sort of maintain that living in that lifestyle. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Katrina Stephenson 12:05
I’m sure you see it with Sonoma, too. I mean, we see it in Marin. That’s definitely like the locals.
William Wells 12:12
Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, we try to do we try to educate the community about about our about our mission, because there’s a lot of in this area in Sonoma County and Napa County, there’s a lot of nimbyism, you know, not in my backyard, when, when it comes to our industry. And, you know, we really try to engage the community around us to show them, hey, this, you know, this is the people that live in your community to work in your community that serve you, and they have, you know, they have as much right to have a place to live as you do. And we really try to, you know, to do that outreach with the community and let them help kind of put their mind at ease, hey, this isn’t, you know, please don’t just say, well, there goes, there goes the neighbourhood. You know, when a development goes up? No, no, this is this is to enhance the quality of life for the entire community here to offer housing to people who otherwise would not be able to
Greg Owens 13:07
Yeah, and I can see like, in this last year, or it’s been like building in this way, in a lot of ways, but for sure, the pandemic causing a lot of the high tech people to flee San Francisco, because they have this opportunity, they can work from anywhere and make the same money they were making, right? And so communities like just that scares me
William Wells 13:28
to death, my brother and I were talking about my wife, and I’ve been looking at buying, we do not own here because I can’t, I can’t afford it, I can’t afford to, to buy a house here, you can’t, you know, so I’m kind of in the same same boat as that as the people that you know, that are, that are in our units that are living on our properties. I’m, you know, absolutely in the same boat as them in a large way. And so I was talking to my brother, my wife, and I’ve been looking out of state not to move but to maybe buy an investment property or rental property out of out of state. My brother lives in the middle of Iowa. He got tired of California about 10 years ago, and he he literally gotten his truck, he left his family here. He said, I’m gonna start driving. I’m gonna start driving East until I find a place we can afford to live. And he stopped. He stopped in the middle of Iowa and a little town and he bought a house. And so he’s been at me for years and years. He’s still married shortly thereafter, after the family followed, okay. A few weeks later, after he got the place set up, they he took a you know, he, the wife and kids falling right after him. But he’s been at me for years, you know, you can buy these houses just you know, they’re, they’re cheap, and they may and may be a little bit of a fixer upper. But and what scares me about this? What’s, you know what? People that are making $250,000 at a tech job here are Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, these places are never going to operate the same again. Why would they? Why would they open these facilities at the cost of millions of dollars a year to two put people in cubicles that no longer need those cubicles. We’ve learned that and these guys are going to take that $250,000 job and get this my brother’s house is a I believe it’s a three bedroom. I think it’s two bath on not quite an acre, he bought that. And then he bought the house next door to him, which was about a third of an acre, he knocked that house down because it was it was pretty much condemned. But we sitting on about an acre he’s into it for like under $60,000. Oh, my brother, what is? Yeah, what is gonna happen is, are these guys that these, you know, the the software engineers are going to take their quarter million dollar job, and they are going to work from the middle of Nebraska, from the middle of Iowa, from the middle of Minnesota, and they are not going to realize that that’s a $50,000 house and the real estate agents back there, we’re gonna know that they don’t realize that. And a $50,000 house two years from now, you know, it scares me. Because those, those houses will now be, you know, quarter million dollar houses in the in the middle of Iowa and Nebraska. And then and then where do we go? Where do we go from there?
Greg Owens 16:00
Yeah, Katrina has been contemplating these same questions quite a bit.
Katrina Stephenson 16:05
Did he pass through Nevada? You know, did he go? Do you go to Nevada? to Iowa?
William Wells 16:11
Yes. Yeah. I took he took 80 across. Yeah. He
Katrina Stephenson 16:15
didn’t find anything in Nevada. Got it.
William Wells 16:18
Is that where you got your your sights?
Katrina Stephenson 16:20
Yes, exactly.
William Wells 16:22
This was 10 years ago that he left.
Greg Owens 16:24
And Nevada has changed a lot in the last 10 years with Tesla factory and sparks over there, and a few other high tech companies moving in, it’s changed
William Wells 16:34
tremendously. And that’s the thing is Tesla and these other companies leave you know, there are there are now not to plug another company on your podcast. But you know, there are there are companies that market themselves as real estate companies that are turnkey operations to get you out of the Bay Area. And they advertise I’m sure we all hear them on our commute, when we’re listening to the radio, hey, we will sell your house we’ll buy help you buy your new house, we will set up concierge service where we’ll meet you in Austin, Texas and give you a tour of the town we’ll meet you in you know, wherever it is, you will meet you in Boise and give you a tour of the town we will set up all your mail forwarding, we’ll set up the moving bands, we will do this and they market themselves as a turnkey operation to leave the Bay Area. And it’s it’s a, you know, I think as as we come out of the pandemic, there will be a mass exodus. And maybe that’ll be good for some folks, maybe I’ll be the Omega man of California, and I’ll finally be able to afford to buy because everybody else is
Greg Owens 17:32
gone. Right, right. I mean, and there’s a bunch of different things at play, cuz I have a friend that’s crunches data, real estate. And he wrote a really nice piece that was in the New York Times about how the the the amount of housing that’s available right now is cut in half from over from 2019. Right. But for the last year, it’s like half the number of units are actually on the market for sale. And it’s and he’s he thinks it’s because of a trend that was speeding up anyway. But but but COVID the pandemic being sequestered in place, sped it up dramatically, is that there are a lot of people baby boomers that have own or own a home. And traditionally they would sell that home and downsize. But with things like Airbnb and that kind of stuff, they don’t need to do that necessarily more. So they might live 30 years and paid off their home and Napa for now, they make that into an Airbnb and buy a second home, right and go to someplace like Austin, Texas, or Iowa or something like that. So then they’re not even like that inventory is not even going on the market staying within that family much longer than it used to be. And so you’re not having the same amount of turnover that we used to see all the time, you know, because of these new these new technologies and that kind of stuff. And it just like compounds, this whole problem you’re talking about, at some point, you think there’s gonna be another there has to be another. I mean, the way the market is going right now, the stock market housing market, everything, it just can’t keep this pressure of upward trajectory that it’s been doing through this entire pandemic, really, it’s just none of this.
William Wells 19:06
And you know, at 60 to $90 a sheet for plywood now. Yeah, building is not going to be an easy proposition either.
Greg Owens 19:14
Yeah, I won’t even price things with materials, because it’s going up so fast. I can’t like paint materials is staying pretty stable, although they’re running out now, but plywood and things like that. We can’t we’re we’re doing a project. We can’t plan on that material price staying the same week in two weeks. It’s like Bitcoin.
William Wells 19:32
No, you know, when i when i when i solicit proposals for different projects, you know, 30 days is has always been pretty standard. This proposal is good for 30 days, and I’m getting guys coming back to me. I’ll get a proposal and if I don’t get that sucker signed, I’m getting guys coming back to me in two weeks and say, Hey, sorry, man, but I, I can’t I can’t honor that proposal anymore. In a matter of like set in a matter of two weeks, guys, they’re saying I’m sorry, but there’s been a lot A 15% jump in this material alone, I can’t honor that anymore.
Greg Owens 20:05
Right, right.
Katrina Stephenson 20:06
Well, so being in Sonoma and up there with the fires, I know that, that it’s probably made materials made expensive and hard to get
William Wells 20:16
the Tubbs fire. It made materials tough to get. But more than that it made it made labor hard to get was what I saw. In 2017. I was working for the other company as a capital improvements manager, and after the tubs and nuns fire, the what was hardest. And really it hit about 2019 when those rebuilds really started to ramp up from that fire to concrete finishing concrete finishers for those foundations could name their own price. And so material was tough, but it was the labour that was that was making it almost impossible to know what was happening. So I was the capital improvement manager over there, and I couldn’t get after the 2017 fires, I there were times when I could not get a proposal because I would call companies and they’d say, I’m sorry, I I’m either booked out for you know, for the next like 13 months, or I’m sorry, I just don’t have the labor to do it my I had companies tell me my entire crew left to go work for you know, company x over there that came out of that came out of Reno and came down here to you know, to kind of take advantage of this. And you know, guys like us, we see the same names day in and day out. We know the contractors, we have all the contacts and after those fires, I’d be driving around in the burn areas. And I was seeing that I’ve seen names of contractors that we had never heard of and you know, I get looking into and these guys were coming up from LA coming up from Phoenix coming down from Reno coming from everywhere, like you know, like they were sharks and there’s blood in the water. And they were snatching up the labor force from all companies and that’s what made it really hard was was the labor for us to get companies that could hire