Keeping educators in-house
Districts building affordable housing to fight a national teacher shortage, high rents
DALY CITY, Calif. — San Francisco Bay Area high school teacher Lisa Raskin moved out of a cramped apartment she was sharing with a roommate and into her own place this month, paying a deeply discounted $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom with expansive views within walking distance to work.
It was once an impossible dream in an exorbitantly priced region hostile to new housing. But her employer, a 4,000-student school district south of San Francisco, was the rare success story in the struggle to provide affordable housing and in May, it opened 122 apartments for teachers and staff.
“I have a sense of community, which I think is more valuable than anything else,” the 41-year-old San Francisco native said. “More districts really need to consider this model. I think it shows educators that they value them.”
The Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City is among just a handful of places in the country with educator housing. But with a national teacher shortage and rapidly rising rents, the working-class district could serve as a harbinger as schools across the U.S. seek to attract and retain educators.
“This is absolutely a solution for other districts. As we’ve gone through the process,
we’ve learned of so many other districts interested in doing what we’ve done,” said Andrew Lie, a school board trustee.
In West Virginia, the American Federation of Teachers recently helped open a building with apartments for teachers and retail shops that officials hope will revitalize the rural town of Welch.
Teachers were traveling “hours and hours to get to school and back,” said Randi Weingarten, AFT union president. “So this became an idea to spark economic development and to create housing.”
Roughly a quarter of the 500 employees at Jefferson Union were resigning or retiring
every year and the district, where teacher salaries for the 2022-23 year start at $60,000, could not compete with wealthier schools that pay new teachers $76,000 or more.
So in 2017-2018, officials came up with a plan to address recruitment and retention, including a $75 million housing complex for teachers and staff financed in part by a $30 million bond measure approved by voters in 2018.
The district also has a more ambitious plan to lease school property for a 1,200unit development that would mix retail with market-rate housing and generate revenue to beef up teacher salaries. But the Sierra Club’s local chapter and others have
expressed objections. They want more units at below-market rents and taller buildings to preserve more open space, including a decades-old garden scheduled for razing.
So far, the district is opposed to those changes, inflaming critics.
Tenants at the school district complex can stay up to five years, hopefully using the time to save up for a down payment on a house.
But those too are becoming more difficult to buy. A 2016 study by Redfin found that only 20% of homes for sale across major U.S. metro areas were affordable on an average teacher’s salary of $62,800, down from 34% in 2012.