Mr. Scott Spivey, Executive Director of Mississippi Home Corporation (MHC), spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club’s July 14, 2020, meeting. Mr. Spivey joined MHC fresh out of Belhaven College in 1998 with a BA in English. While at MHC, Spivey earned an MA in English at Mississippi College. The subjects of Spivey’s talk were MHC and affordable housing. 

Spivey said that housing is both economic development and a social stabilizer and that politically, he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but is a member of the Housing Party.

MHC's mission is to enhance Mississippi 's long-term economic viability by financing safe, decent, affordable housing and helping working families build wealth. In keeping with its mission, MHC has developed various programs for groups such as homebuyers, realtors, lenders, developers, property managers, and a special program for renters adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This rental assistance program is known by the acronym RAMP (Rental Assistance for Mississippians Program).

Per the MHC website, ‘There is no question that the need for affordable housing in Mississippi is tremendous. The state of Mississippi is constantly working to increase the quality and affordability of the housing stock available to low- and moderate-income Mississippians. The Mississippi Home Corporation (MHC) was created by the Mississippi Home Corporation act of 1989 to address these housing needs. MHC plays a critical role in these efforts working with the Governor, the Mississippi Legislature, the U.S. Congressional delegation, and others in the affordable housing industry to develop private and public partnerships throughout the state and nation to increase the awareness of Mississippi’s desperate need for affordable housing.”.

Looking to the immediate future, there are challenges and opportunities. The challenges are primarily due to the job losses due to COVID-19 and the pending expiration of the extended unemployment payments created by the CARES Act of 2020 at the end of July. The loss of the unemployment payments is expected to result in a massive number of evictions which will mean that landlords will lose rent payments reducing their ability to make mortgage payments and ultimately lose their properties reducing the rental stock available to low and moderate-income people.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 million Americans lost their jobs in March 2020 causing the employment rate to jump from about 4% in February to nearly 17% at the end of March. Spivey said that full employment is not expected to return until 2024. New spikes in the unemployment rate are expected at the end of July 2020 and later in the year if Congress can not agree on additional stimulus programs.

Spivey said that homeownership in Mississippi generally runs 7-10% above the rate in the US, but that these rates have been in steady decline due to a decline in family formation units and the difficulty in accruing down payment funds. MHC has programs to provide down payment assistance to moderate- and low-income first-time homebuyers. These assistance programs are threatened by rules by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Interestingly, Spivey said that 25% of first-time homebuyers get down payment assistance from family and friends and 15% get their assistance from government programs.

Discussing the real estate market, Spivey said that record low-interest rates of around 2.5% on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. He further said that demand is outpacing supply so there is a need for new housing units. 

We thank Spivey for his presentation and for his service to Mississippi and Mississippians. The following photo is from MHC.

Mike and his wife, Bettye, came back to their hometown of Louisville, MS, in 1998.  Mike is an elder at First Presbyterian Church, teaches the adult Sunday School class, and is a member of the Louisville Rotary Club.  Mike is an avid pilot with more than 3000 hours in the cockpit, flying his Cirrus aircraft for business, pleasure, and philanthropic work.  

He is currently president of a family-owned company in the helicopter aerial application business. In addition, he serves as president of Louisville’s airport board, and as director and executive committee member of InnovateMS.  He also serves as the Board Chair of a Mississippi-based healthcare-company.

The purpose of his presentation to the Rotary Club of North Jackson was to tell us about an exciting venture that he and fellow Rotarian Rich Sun co-founded, the MS Coding Academies.  

He began his speech by stating the fact that the state of Mississippi graduates fewer than300 Computer Science graduates annually to fill 1,000 open jobs, and half of those graduates leave the state for other opportunities. The purpose of the coding academies is to have high school graduates spend a year becoming coders to address this gap of supply and demand in our state.

Program graduates become what are called “Full Stack” coders. The term “Full Stack” means that students will be working with every layer in the “stack” of a typical web application: user interface, front end (browser), middle tier, and back end (server and database). In addition to coding, the program focuses on teaching the students to become disciplined team players. The program runs 40 hr. per week and takes a full 11-month academic year. There is no homework.

Typical new students are high school graduates working minimum wage jobs, typically in the fast food industry. When they successfully complete the program their base salaries average around $40,000 annually. The program is highly intensive. Potential employers attend the classes and play a vital role in making the educational experience relevant. The Coding Academy Instructors are required to have a “real world” coding experience in addition to their academic credentials. 

Currently, there are three coding academies in the State of Mississippi: Water Valley, Starkville, and Jackson. The program expects to expand into the Gulf Coast region in the next year and will ultimately graduate 80 - 100 new coders annually. The Academies in Jackson and Starkville have graduated 82 coders in the 2017-2020 period. Those graduates have seen cumulative salary increases of $850,000 per year from their pre-academy levels. Most of the enrollees are from a diverse population with females and African-Americans making up the majority of the enrollees. 

Comcast has funded a special program for Veterans that is showing great promise. There is no cost to the attendee to participate in the program, but the full cost is about $17K per year for civilian attendees and about $8k for the veterans’ program.

The academies have created a for-profit subsidiary,  MS CodeW Works, to provide coding resources as an alternative to work that is now outsourced outside the USA The founders envision Mississippi becoming a key outsourcing location competing very favorably with Asia when Code Works is up and running. 

The expectation of the founders is to increase the level of diversity in technical jobs, and to reduce the gap between jobs and talent. Both Starkville and Jackson are recruiting for their next cohort of students with classes to start in August. Currently, there are 60 prospective students in the screening process. 

We thank Mike for his presentation and for his work with the coding academies.

Jim Richmond, Vice President, Marketing of C Spire spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s June 23, 2020, meeting. Mr. Richmond joined what was then Cellular South in South West Mississippi in 1991. He is a graduate of Mississipi State University. He serves on the Mississippi State University Foundation board and the boards of several Banks and financial institutions. He and his wife Jennifer have two daughters, one of whom is in Medical Schools at UMMC and the other is affiliated with Clinton Public Schools.

Richmond commented that C Spire is a heavy user of Online systems that permit many of its employees to work remotely even in “normal” times. He said that C Spire has multiple lines of business:

• Wireless Division which was started in 1988 as Cellular South. Prior to entering the mobile communications business, the company had a landline business that was formed in 1950. The wireless division has footprints in Mississippi, Memphis, and Mobile. The company is convenience focused and is offering appointments, curbside service, and self serve web options available to clients. The wireless business unit is working on 5G service which is in progress. C Spire currently has some 5G sites in operation The company is the largest privately held wireless company in the US. 

• Business Division with offices in Hattiesburg, Mobile, Birmingham, and several Tennessee cities.  It focuses on Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. The business division has customers in 38 states. It has a large variety of offerings, including VOIP, cloud data storage, premier hardware offerings, and acts as a consultant to its customers. The business division is highly ranked nationally as a premier service provider to its IT customers.

• Home Division which was created in 2013,  provides service to 23 Mississippi cities and will expand to Alabama in July. It offers gigabit fiber, Mesh wifi, and has a dedicated blue shoe crew.

• Other areas in which C Spire is involver are:

  • Health where the company launched a telehealth application for physicians to use in2019. This was expanded in 2020 to permit consumers to contact  UMMC to schedule a COVID-19 test. The best example of this application was when it was launched to use to schedule tests at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds in the Spring of 2020.

  •  The Tech Movement with

    • Basecamp Coding Academy

    • C3 Coding Challenge

    • Software Development Pathway

These are aimed at creating more people with coding and programming skills

• C Spire is part of a Rural Broadband Consortium that is working to expand the availability of internet technology to rural areas

• The Mission Network (Mississippi Optical Network)  is a network that connects research institutions in Mississippi with other similar institutions throughout the country. It offers 100-gigabit connectivity to participants.

• C Spire Foundation

  • Founded to focus on STEM initiatives, education, digital literacy, and workforce development

  • Provided scholarship funding to the 8 Mississippi Universities

  • Supports numerous STEM activities in Mississippi to help increase the pursuit of computer science in the state. These include, for example,  the basecamp coding academy, the Mississippi Children’s Musem Science Fest, and The C Spire Coding Challenges

When COVID-19 struck, C Spire was prepared. The company already had plans in place to deal with hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. Many of their representatives were already working remotely. Richmond said that his marketing personnel were already dispersed throughout their service area. The management team conducted daily update calls to check on personnel, network status, COVID trends, and other issues. C Spire has some 1705 employees so they had to make preparations for those not already doing so to work remotely. These update calls have now decreased in frequency to 3 days per week compared with the all-day calls on Saturdays at the beginning.

C Spire Cares is the initiative that the company has developed to help its costumers during the pandemic. The saying is that “our network has you covered.” People working from home, increased demand for video streaming service, etc had tested the network., but the network has performed. The company increased its access to streaming services by 50% to help its customers. 

CSpire developed Pop-up hot spots to allow students in underserved areas to continue schooling with the libraries and other access points shut down. The objective was to Keep America Connected. This program gave customers more time to pay bills and waived overage charges. During this time the business division representatives increased their consultant roles to their customers.

The company achieved sales records daily during the first part of the COVID shutdowns. It focused on increasing safety measures for employees and customers. At some locations, the installation representatives had to FaceTime the new customers and guide them through the installation of their new hardware.

CSpire also became internally focused during this period. They were concerned about the health of the employees. They initiate an internal Morning Show three or four days a week and also used direct emails to the employees and workplace posts. They also formed a safe return to the office team to plan for getting people back to their offices.

What’s Next?

• Things are different now than they were before the pandemic struck.

• C Spire will look for new opportunities. 

• They will have a press conference on July 16 announcing the expansion of their home service into Alabama with service to begin in the fall.

• The company will look for new initiatives in:

  • Health

  • Universities

  • Expanding its service area

We thank Richmond for his presentation and for the very good work that C Spire does. The following photo is from his Linked In profile: