Tolkkinen: Good luck finding a handyman in greater Minnesota these days

Vernon Quaal’s dairy barn in Otter Tail County is leaking in the worst possible place — right over his milking parlor.

The trouble is, he can’t find anyone to fix it at a price he can afford. Over the years, the situation has gotten worse and worse, and now the wood underneath has rotted and a whole section of barn roof needs to be replaced.

“It’s cheaper to build a new building than it is to fix anything,” he said.

Quaal has plenty of company throughout greater Minnesota. On social media pages throughout the state, homeowners lament their inability to find people to help with home maintenance and repairs, from replacing bricks fallen from chimneys to new windows.

Resort owner Ardy Hoye said she’s lived in Otter Tail County for 49 years. It used to be that handymen would advertise their services on signs next to their driveways. For more than a year, she has been trying to find someone to paint two ceilings in her cabins — a job too big for her and her husband, who are aging, but not big enough for a painting contractor who can make more money painting entire houses or commercial buildings.

“It used to be you would get people around and they would return your call and they would come out and do some things,” she said. “It really is difficult to get some of these smaller projects done.”

Fernando Quijano, a community economist for the University of Minnesota Extension in Moorhead, traces the shortage of handymen — or handy people — to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. The recession was hard on people in the building trades, and many left.

After the recession ended, independent contractors, or handymen, made more money than those employed for wages building homes and businesses. From 2010 to 2015, wage earners in the building trades earned about $20 or $25 an hour, while specialty trade contractors could bring in $32 an hour.

But that began to flip in 2016, and in recent years, the building trades began paying significantly more than independent contractors, especially after the pandemic. That left fewer people patching eaves and repairing sheetrock, as more people started working for contractors building homes or businesses.

The economic situation leaves many homeowners in greater Minnesota in a quandary.

After a contractor did a major rebuild for Melanie Dethlefsen of Starbuck, she waited several years for him to finish building a three-season porch and finish their laundry room and pantry. They were told he was waiting for his concrete person.

“It didn’t happen that fall, didn’t happen the next spring, didn’t appear it was going to happen the next fall,” she said.

Then their contractor ghosted them, failing to respond to numerous messages.

“Clearly he only wanted our business for the great big rebuild and he didn’t want it for a small addition,” she said.

Finally they found someone who plans to work on it this month.

The experience, she said, has been “So frustrating!”

The problem in finding home repair and maintenance help is so chronic that it’s created its own quip about the area code in the northern part of the state: “218 and wait.”

Signs are that handy people have noticed the need and the potential to earn good money. But the days of a $20-an-hour handyman appear to be over.

Several people I’ve spoken with have entered the field recently in greater Minnesota. Aaron Blom, a licensed electrician from Montevideo who oversees Montevideo’s public works department, has already started to offer handyman services in Otter Tail County, and a similar business has started in Henning.

Some handymen said they charge $100 or more an hour. By that mark, Blom’s $75-an-hour fee seems downright reasonable, although it would no doubt be out of reach for people on fixed incomes.

Blom could probably make significantly more elsewhere, but he said the idea of helping people out in their homes makes him happy.

“I just want to be my own boss and do my own thing,” he said. “I think there’s a huge niche for the so-called handyman because the contractors don’t want to do these small projects. There’s no money in it.”

Contractors have to pay employees, and that’s expensive, he said. When it’s just him, he has to pay insurance and licensing and taxes, but he can still replace someone’s front door for $350 instead of $1,000. (We once got a quote to replace a front door in Bemidji for well over $1,000. We turned it down and eventually replaced it ourselves when we had time.) Charging $75 an hour will provide a nice life for him and his family once he retires from his city job, he said.

Blom is just one person, but if he’s seeing the advantages in working as a handyman in greater Minnesota, maybe others are, too.

“People keep telling me, ‘You’ll be busy,’” Blom said.

Karen Tolkkinen is based in Otter Tail County, Minn.