Home prices huge barrier for teachers
As teachers face a host of health and safety challenges in the new school year, one constant remains — the Bay Area remains a brutal test for educators who want to buy a home.
Despite drawing one of the highest teacher salaries in the country, the typical educator in San Jose and Santa Clara County has a harder time affording a home than his or her peers anywhere in the United States. The East Bay and San Francisco are nearly as bad, according to an analysis by online broker Redfin.
Bay Area teachers would have roughly $225 to $1,200 a month left over for living expenses if they had a mortgage on a median-priced home, the study found. The study highlights a central Silicon Valley housing paradox: Good public schools drive up home prices, while high home prices drive out teachers.
Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said the Bay Area’s lack of affordable housing has pushed home prices beyond the budgets of many public employees. “You can give teachers more money,” Fairweather said, “but they’re still competing against tech workers with more income.”
The steady and sometimes rapid rise in Bay Area home prices since 2012 has far outstripped raises for public educators. A rush of pandemic homebuying this spring pushed the median price of a home in the ninecounty region over $1 million. The rising costs have made it difficult in some districts to recruit and retain teachers and keep standards high, educators say.
The Redfin analysis measured how much disposable income a single teacher making the median salary in a U.S. metro would have left over after paying the mortgage on a typical house. It’s unlikely a single teacher in the Bay Area would qualify for a loan and make payments on a $1 million home without additional income, personal savings or family help.
The median home price in the San Jose metro is $1.2 million, and the median salary for a teacher is $90,300, according to the Redfin analysis. Mortgage payments on a Silicon Valley home would leave a single teacher with just $2,700 left for groceries and living expenses for a year. The typical U.S. teacher could buy a home and have more than 10 times the disposable income as a homeowning peer in San Jose.
Teachers in San Francisco and the East Bay have a median income of $85,700 and would have $14,900 left over annually for all other living expenses.
Educators say the reality is few young teachers in the Bay Area are homeowners. Early-career educators in the Bay Area often share apartments with roommates and partners, live with family or commute long distances to find affordable housing. Homeownership typically is reserved for teachers with partners drawing high incomes in tech or other fields.
Bonuses, raises and innovative efforts to provide subsidized housing for educators with middle-class salaries have failed to solve the problem across the Bay Area. About 1 in 5 loans from the Empower Homebuyers program administered by Santa Clara County and the nonprofit Housing Trust Silicon Valley have gone to teachers — but the demand is far greater, officials say.
“We’ve been working on this housing issue for a long, long time,” said Patrick Bernhardt, a math teacher and president of the San Jose Teachers Association. “Realistically, this isn’t a problem of the district not paying enough.”
The high cost of living has been the main driver of teachers out of San Jose, Bernhardt said. One recent teacher of the year left for a job in the East Bay to be closer to her San Leandro home.
San Jose and San Jose Unified School District have begun exploring innovative housing programs, including setting aside schoolowned properties for teacher-dedicated housing development. Those efforts, however, are years away.
Frank Lara of United Educators of San Francisco said teachers want to live near their schools, and be part of the communities where they teach. Housing costs are expected to be an issue teachers and administrators address in future union negotiating sessions, he said.
Sky-high prices in San Francisco have made the district a popular shortterm stop for early career teachers to train — and leave. “We just need housing to be affordable,” Lara said. “People just want a place to live.”