Lee’s legacy: a teacher housing plan
It was a long, meandering and fruitless discussion for more than a decade, but there’s now finally a fairly solid plan for teacher housing in San Francisco. Last May, the late Mayor Ed Lee said he’d had enough of the working group on teacher housing that didn’t seem to accomplish much and announced unilaterally that he’d picked a site: the Francis Scott Key Annex at 1360 43rd Ave. in the Outer Sunset. He said the city would commit $44 million to the project.
His announcement came after this column featured the story of a San Francisco public high school math teacher who was homeless in a city where teachers are paid far less than their counterparts in other school districts around the state and housing costs far more.
“I am disturbed as anyone to have a teacher who’s homeless,” Lee said back then, seven months before dying of a heart attack. “There is a level of frustration I have with the current conversation of the working group. We have an immediate problem right now.”
On Tuesday, Lee’s successor, Mayor Mark Farrell, will announce that the nonprofit af-
fordable housing developer Mid-Pen Housing has been selected to develop the site. Details are beginning to take shape.
The complex will have 100 to 120 apartments, a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units. It’ll probably be four floors, with a rooftop garden and patio spaces for residents, as well as a larger play area on the grounds for the wider neighborhood.
Forty percent of the units will be designated for classroom aides who earn even less than the city’s teachers. Those paraprofessionals make so little that their units will be backed by federal low-income tax credits, which means that even if they stop working for the school district, they can’t be kicked out. They’ll pay about $1,150 per month for a one-bedroom and more for larger units, according to Kate Hartley, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing.
The rest will be designated for classroom teachers, and their rents will vary depending on total household income. Those households making more than 120 percent of the area median income — which no single teacher would reach — would pay $2,770 for a one-bedroom unit.
That still seems like a lot to me, even if it is lower than market rate in this city of exorbitant costs. Those units won’t be tied to federal low-income tax credits, so if those teachers sever their ties with the school district, they stand to lose their apartments. Even if they remain employed by the district, they’ll have to move on after seven years.
After community meetings, the design process will begin in earnest. Then the project will undergo the entitlement process — gaining the requisite government approvals — and construction. Hartley said teachers and aides will be selected via a lottery and should be able to move into their units in three to four years.
“We don’t want to waste any time,” she said, adding her staff is charging ahead on the course Lee set for them, even if he’s no longer here to provide guidance. “This was definitely one of his most important priorities, and we want to honor his memory by getting this built in the most highquality way and the quickest way possible.”
The entire project is expected to cost up to $70 million and will be paid for by city money Lee earmarked, low-income housing tax credits and a bank loan to be repaid with rents from the educators who eventually move in.
The city is already looking at more opportunities for teacher housing and hopes to start the development process on other plots of land owned by the school district soon. The 2.4-acre site at Seventh Avenue and Lawton Street in the Inner Sunset that’s used as a pumpkin patch and Christmas tree lot is the most likely No. 2.
Other sites under review are one on Middle Point Road in Bayview-Hunters Point and one at a planned new school in Mission Bay.
For the Outer Sunset site, four developers expressed interest, and Mid-Pen was chosen because of its expertise in creating housing for middle-income households, including teachers.
Jan Lindenthal, vice president of real estate development for Mid-Pen, said the group has conducted feasibility studies for teacher housing in Pacifica and Monterey, but has never built a complex specifically for teachers. She said while some school districts have built their own housing, this model of a city developing on school district land is pretty new.
“Focusing on teachers and para-educators, we think, is really important,” she said. “It’s something we hear about in every community that we visit.”
While teachers aren’t paid well anywhere in California, their pay in San Francisco is notoriously low. A Chronicle analysis found that in 2015-16, 775 school districts reported salary data to the state. San Francisco’s average teacher pay for that year — $67,540 — ranked it No. 478, on par with Chico, Salinas and Vacaville. Even places where it’s far less expensive to live, including Fresno, Benicia, Gilroy and Stockton, pay their teachers more.
San Francisco district officials have never fully explained why they pay teachers so little, at least not to my satisfaction. They’ve said they’ve prioritized small class sizes, subsidizing preschool and healthy school meals, and operating more small schools, which each require their own administrative staffs.
But it’s hard to imagine anything more crucial for kids than a stable, experienced teaching staff that lives in the community. Currently, some San Francisco teachers are commuting upward of three hours every day, living in in-law units with no kitchens or couch-surfing with friends. Every year, hundreds leave for better salaries and more affordable housing, which are available pretty much everywhere else.
In November, the school district and teachers’ union agreed to a new contract with an 11 percent raise over three years plus a one-time 2 percent bonus. They are also backing a parcel tax on the June ballot that would raise salaries an additional 7 percent in the 2018-19 school year.
Myong Leigh, deputy superintendent, said that if the parcel tax passes, average pay for San Francisco teachers should move into the top 25 percent of districts in California.
“We’re making really important progress,” he said. “We still have work to do considering the housing prices here, but I do think that in terms of salaries, we’re gaining a lot of ground.”
In a city where the average rent in March was $3,558, according to Rent Jungle, and the median sales price for a single family home has hit a whopping $1.6 million, according to Paragon Real Estate, teachers need all the help they can get.