Bill Good arrived in Detroit the night before the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) Regional Summit and turned on the local television news just in time to catch an investigative piece on…wait for it…the local dishonest roofer who ripped off an old woman in a poor neighborhood.
“We hear those stories all the time,” the NRCA president lamented to summit attendees the following day. “But we never hear about the good work others are doing in this industry, and that’s a bit of a problem for us.”
“There are a lot of good deeds going on in the industry, but publicizing it is not something we think about doing,” he explained. “We do them because it’s just the right thing to do…but we need to highlight the good work we’re doing to better differentiate ourselves as professional roofers from the non-professionals out there.”
The best way to do that, Good said, is by actively participating in and talking about community-service projects that roofing contractors are involved in.
So, telling those stories has been a big push for the NRCA this year, and in particular with National Roofing Week July 5-11. Throughout the week, the organization will urge contractors to highlight the good they’re doing in communities around the country. Though unaffiliated with the NRCA, I quickly thought about how we at RC, as a publication that serves roofers, could contribute by sharing a story or two with our broad audience. And I didn’t have to wait long to find one.
Just two days later, I found myself walking through the mechanical bowels of one of Detroit’s iconic and aging inner-city high schools to get to the roof. And once there, I witnessed first-hand how the roofing industry is playing a part in rebuilding one of America’s great cities from the inside out.
Life Remodeled, a nonprofit organization focused on blight removal, neighborhood beautification and community improvement, chose the Osborn High School campus and surrounding neighborhoods as its annual revitalization project. By summer’s end, the group hopes to install a new roofing system on the building, as well as refurbish the library, gym, main office and entrance. That wouldn’t be possible without the collaboration of three different local roofing contractors — Lutz Roofing, A&Z Roofing and Schena Roofing — and supplies from Allied Building Products.
You can read more about the project and the roofing contractors involved in upcoming editions of Roofing Contractor magazine, and if you have a positive roofing story to share, don’t hold back! Let us know by reaching out to me at aisnera@bnpmedia.com or 248-244-6497.