Can Teacher Housing Entice Educators to Work in Expensive Cities? #realestate #homeownership #finance

Source:  Curbed

Teaching crises have challenged American education for decades.  Increasing enrollment, substandard facilities, and a scramble to find a way to pay for solutions:  Today's familiar pressures were making headlines back in 1954.  At the time, in another example of "same news, different day," the San Francisco superintendent of schools declared that the city's teacher shortage was "acute."
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Making Sense of the Story:

- While the issue may be the same, today's teaching crises in the Bay Area have taken on dimensions that postwar administrators couldn't have imagined.  San Francisco and its surrounding communities offer the most extreme case studies that showcase the challenging math of making it, and making a home, as an urban school teacher.

- According to Apartment List data, fifth-year teachers in the city have to spend nearly 70 percent of their income to rent a one-bedroom, and Trulia noted that the city's teachers can only afford .04 percent of the homes in the entire city.

- Housing has become such a drain on salaries that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee recently announced the city would build its own rental housing in the Outer Sunset neighborhood specifically for teachers.  This is yet another sign, coupled with the prevalence of couchsurfing and long commutes, that its educators are losing the battle against escalating rent.

- Teachers are often lionized for tackling a difficult job without the salaries and support they deserve.  Yet increasingly, they also face affordability challenges outside the classroom.  Rising rent and housing costs have made teaching jobs in pricey urban districts increasingly difficult for schools to fill.  According to research by the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), the United States was short roughly 1000,000 teachers last year, with compensation cited as a key reason many have left positions, or the profession altogether.

- For many school districts, especially in California, alleviating the real estate squeeze facing teachers is becoming a more prominent part of efforts to retain talent.  For school districts, factoring housing into compensation and pay packages, or even becoming landlords themselves, is becoming a new way to offer more than just a salary bump.  Teachers get a better quality of life, are able to afford housing closer to their classrooms, cut down on their commute, and retain a connection with the communities they serve.  Without radical increases in education budgets, this is an increasingly popular and creative way to make salaries stretch further.

Check out the full story here:
https://www.curbed.com/2017/9/12/16294628/teacher-housing-real-estate-low-income-teachers-village

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