These 2 Bay Area School Bonds Could Help Build Teacher Housing

For years, Bay Area teachers have said one of their biggest concerns is finding affordable housing close to where they work. For some teachers, the fact that their salaries can’t keep up with the increased cost of living has some considering leaving the profession altogether.

Now, more school districts across California are taking matters into their own hands by getting into the business of building housing for their teachers and staff on empty parking lots, unused office buildings and other excess land. And, in the Bay Area, two districts are turning to bond measures to help pay for it.

Those two bonds — Measure R in Santa Clara County and Measure K in San Mateo County — would raise $1.15 billion and $153 million, respectively, to pay for upgrades to school district facilities. Both measures include building affordable housing for teachers and staff in their descriptions for what the bond could fund.

The measures come as state leaders ask voters to consider a $10 billion bond measure to upgrade school facilities across California. And, as state leaders are faced with a lofty goal to plan for 2.5 million new homes statewide by 2030, they are encouraging school districts to be more proactive about building housing for their staff.

In San Mateo County, a group of parents and teachers at the Cabrillo Unified School District saw other school districts develop housing for their employees and were inspired to campaign to get Measure K on the ballot. If approved by voters, most of the $153 million will be used to fix classrooms, according to members of the board. Some of the money can also be used to construct educator housing.

San José Unified School District’s Measure R anticipates dedicating approximately $283 million of the total $1.15 billion bond to build housing for staff.

Renata Sanchez, president of the San José Teachers Union, said the district has seen employee vacancy rates rise, especially among instructional associates, the staff who support special education teachers, and who are often paid less than teachers. She said the bond could help keep those associates from leaving the district.

“Nobody here wants to be in the business of developing land for housing,” Sanchez said. “We just feel that we’re cornered into it. We have to do something because nobody else is.”

However, opponents of local bond measures say school districts should focus on educating their students, and that bond measures are often proposed too lightly, without thought to how they will impact future residents who have to pay back the debt.

“Anybody who owns a home is going to pay more for that home every year,” said Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, which is opposed to both measures R and K. “And even if you’re a renter, guess where the landlord gets the money to pay these taxes?”

So far, only a handful of school districts across the state have successfully completed construction on new workforce housing. Santa Clara Unified School District was the first district to build housing for its staff, according to the California School Board Association. The apartment complex, named Casa Del Maestro, opened in 2002 and has 70 one- and two-bedroom apartments.

This summer, the Department of Education announced an initiative to help schools navigate the muddy waters of housing development.

In August, the California School Board Association hosted a summit with school district staff, affordable housing advocates and researchers to look into how schools can more effectively build housing. According to Scott Roark, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, more than 150 districts across the state are now in “some stage of developing housing on district property.”

Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Board Association, said districts are well-positioned to develop housing because they already own the land. And he argued such projects tend to have a shorter timeline than traditional affordable housing projects.

“The land or the buildings that the school districts own — that is under their control, and they have a lot of autonomy,” he said. “You can get from concept to people moving into housing in as little as five years.”

Sanchez and others in the San José Unified School District have concrete plans for where they would build the new housing if their bond passes.

One project would turn an empty parking lot into 75 studio and one-bedroom apartments with parking underground. Another would move a magnet school to a larger campus and use the existing land to build approximately 120 apartments and townhomes. Their third site would build educator housing on what is currently a special education school.

The biggest project would transform an open field on a technical education campus into an estimated 300 two-bedroom apartments and townhomes. Sanchez said funds from Measure R could fund two of the smaller projects or the one with 300 units.

But even if the bond measures are approved, the projects will have to go through each city’s complicated and often costly permitting process.

And, in Half Moon Bay, the proposed housing has already caused consternation amongst neighbors who worry the new development could be “out of character” with the existing homes. Mike Alifano, a Half Moon Bay resident and member of previous school bond oversight committees, said this is the district’s first bond measure to mention teacher housing.

“We’re a community that doesn’t like a lot of change, and it’s because we want to keep this look and feel of the way things are right now,” he said. “There were other areas [the district] was looking at in different communities, and we had a bit of pushback in those communities.”

Sanchez said there have been plans to develop teacher housing in San José since 2020, but once the pandemic hit, the district had to put the projects on hold. But she said she didn’t want to wait any longer.

“We are losing teachers across the state, but in this area, at an alarming rate,” she said. “Our kids will suffer if we don’t do something soon.”

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