In boom towns like New York and San Francisco, sky-high rents and house prices are pushing teachers out of the communities they serve. Cities like Mountain View, Cupertino, San Francisco and Santa Clara are experimenting with low-rent units for teachers to combat the issue.
Cupertino
Cupertino is building 200 units on a site of a closed elementary school site. The Cupertino site does not have a firm budget for the project yet. Cupertino has 864 teachers serving 18,948 at 20 schools. The project is targeted for newer teachers to the Cupertino school districts.
Santa Clara
In Santa Clara, the housing project Casa del Maestro Phase II is a 30-unit project to build on the success of the 2002 Casa del Maestro 40-unit project.
The estimate budget for the Phase II project is $6.5 million. For those keeping score at home, that equates to a development cost of $215,000 per unit. The rental cost for a 2-bedroom apartment with a car garage is $1500, or half the current market rate. Santa Clara Unified School District serves 14,551 students at 12 schools. There are 660 full-time teachers. Teachers can live in the Casa del Maestro for up to 5 years. These units are highly sought after, and the waiting lists are long.
Two levels of housing?
The popularity of the Casa del Maestro housing units is evidence of the need for affordable housing for teachers in high-rent cities. Based on the number of teachers in Santa Clara Unified, a little over 10% are serviced by Casa del Maestro.
Combining Cupertino’s strategy of housing for new teachers, and Santa Clara’s use of Casa del Maestro for retention may be a blueprint for cities with high housing prices.
Dorm-style apartments could be used to house new and single teachers who may enjoy the collegial housing environment. A probable maximum rental term for these units may be 2–4 years, and be priced at attractive discounts. The Cupertino project is targeting a 2 year maximum rental length.
The larger units such as those of Casa del Maestro could be reserved for the more tenured and high-performing teachers.
What percentage of housing to teachers is the right mix?
A target for high-rent cities might be 40-50% of the teacher population. 20–25% for new and younger teachers (dorm-style aparments), and 20–25% Casa del Maestro-type units. For a city the size of Santa Clara, that would mean, 150 dorm-style units and 150 (or twice the current Casa del Maestro capacity) larger units.
By increasing the number of available units, the city could extend the maximum lease period for the more desirable units from 5-years to 10-years.
Keep the ties to the community
Teachers are losing touch with the communities they are serving, and that is not good. Having teachers commute 3 hours a day to make modest wages is not going to allow these professionals to perform at their peak ability. Teachers who send their children to the school district they work in are going to have a higher level of involvement and motivation to deliver and demand the best educational experience of themselves, their peers, and administrators.
Teachers living in low-income neighborhoods could also benefits
Having teachers living in the community is not only a challenge for high-cost cities, it is also a challenge for low-income school districts. Providing quality and affordable housing for teachers can gentrify and improve the neighborhood values of low-income neighborhoods. This is controversial and should be analyzed carefully. Will these housing communities put pressure on low-income housing affordability and push those families out? That is a valid concern. On the upside, providing a higher value education experience due to motivated teachers should lead to higher achievement for low-income students. We need bold superintendents, mayors and community leaders to take on the challenge and build case studies to better understand if in-community teacher housing works.
Better schools, higher housing values
Affluent families with young children are pushing up housing prices in order to get into cities with high-scoring school districts. The unintended consequence of this is that the best teachers in these school districts are getting pushed out. The NIMBY folks should appreciate this disconnection and get behind initiatives to attract and retain the best teachers. The argument is that schools should not, and do not want to be in the real estate business. Duly noted. Real-world problems such as the current housing crisis have a way of inconveniently getting in the way of these pragmatic concerns. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and hope the problem will go away. We need to conduct radical experiments to address these seemingly intractable problems.
Take a page from higher education
Consider the university environment. If Harvard or Stanford closed its dorms and left housing to the private sector, what would that do to their communities? Harvard and Stanford do not list housing young students as their mission. Their mission is to educate and mold young adults into leaders in business, government, education and philanthropy. Yet, in order to create the proper ecosystem for learning and collaboration, they do put a high emphasis on all aspects of the student experience including dormatories and cafeterias. Schools and cities need to rethink what it takes to run a top performing school. There is little argument that having motivated and community-involved teachers produce superior results to the alternative. Everybody loves great teachers. It is time to think of ways to provide the necessary support for these professionals ahead of a deeping housing crisis.
For a much better article on innovative teacher housing programs, read the prospect.org article by Rachel M. Cohen.
