California Schools Keep Losing Teachers. The State Wants to Help Build Homes for Them

To stem an outflow of teachers from schools across the state, California’s Department of Education encourages districts to venture into a different business: housing.

Superintendent Tony Thurmond on Tuesday announced an initiative that aims to establish the department as a go-to resource for districts looking to build homes for teachers on their property. The move comes as the state faces a housing affordability crisis and a shortage of some 2.5 million homes. School districts lose, on average, 12% of their staff each year to retirements and turnover.

“This is a strategy to help allow us to keep our workforce,” Thurmond said. “This is part of a larger plan to make sure that people can afford to live where they work, that they can afford the American dream and to buy a home, and that they have earnings that support them.”

The nearly 11,000 school districts across the state control more than 151,000 acres of total property. A 2021 analysis by UC Berkeley and UCLA found that of that land, there are enough developable parcels to support 2.3 million new homes or more than 90% of the state’s estimated shortage.

Districts have shown recent success in overcoming opposition to affordable housing for teachers. In Menlo Park, voters in 2022 defeated an attempt to block a teacher housing project in a single-family neighborhood. And in San Jose, school district leaders voted last week to place a $1.2 billion bond on the November ballot, part of which would fund new teacher housing.

Thurmond plans to convene a housing summit on Aug. 14, bringing together members of the construction and building trades, labor unions, school districts and others to identify barriers to housing development and ensure the Department of Education can make it easier for districts to build.

“The school districts have one of the most important parts of being able to create educator housing: They own land,” Thurmond said. “So there’s no need to make a purchase, to acquire land to develop that land.”

Districts can use local bonds and state tax credits, some $500 million of which were approved for educator housing as part of the 2020 state budget. And in 2022, the Legislature approved AB 2295, which essentially rezoned school properties to allow housing.

However, despite the additional tax credit funding and legislation, only a handful of districts across the state have completed educator housing projects, though dozens more have expressed interest or are in various stages of the development process, according to the California School Boards Association. One big reason, association legislative director Andrew Keller said, is that not enough districts know how to go about building housing.

“Chief among those roadblocks, actually, is the fact that schools aren’t in the housing business,” Keller said. “This is something that’s new to them.”

The school board association leads workshops for district staff on approaching and constructing housing on their properties, including connecting them with developers and financial institutions. But uptake has been slow.

Thurmond said he was hoping to accelerate that with the new initiative, which will include creating a “scalable blueprint” for districts to use to develop housing and exploring potential legislation that may include allowing school bond funds to go toward housing for families in the district, not just teachers and staff members.

Andy Lie, a trustee of the Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County, said he’s seen the impact of educator housing firsthand. The district faced a 25% staff turnover before completing a 122-unit apartment complex in May 2022. Since then, the district has had no vacancies, he said.

“The staff morale is up,” Lie said. “But most importantly, we can’t give our best to our students if our educators are struggling with housing insecurity.”

In Palo Alto, the local educators association is supporting two housing projects that association president Teri Baldwin said would go a long way toward enabling teachers and other school staff to live in the districts where they teach.

“Our teachers, especially our newer teachers who are lower on the salary scale, they can’t afford to live close by,” Baldwin said. “As a teacher, you want to be part of your community.”