A view of the courtyard from the third floor of a housing complex for teachers and education staff of Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City on July 8, 2022.
Credit: Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo
Jefferson Union High School District used to lose a quarter of its staff every year, which meant that it began every school year scrambling to fill vacancies. That changed in 2022 when the Daly City-based district developed affordable housing for its staff.
The district built 122 units on school district-owned land that is now fully occupied by 25% of the district’s staff. Board member Andy Lie said the district is beginning the new school year with zero vacancies, a transformation he calls “remarkable” and “unheard of in public education.”
In January, legislation to ease zoning requirements for school districts interested in building affordable housing took effect. Jefferson Union High and a handful of other districts in the state are ahead of others in providing housing for both teachers and classified staff.
Districts with success stories, as well as local and state leaders, will be at an Aug. 14 housing summit convened by the California Department of Education (CDE). During a news conference Tuesday at department headquarters, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said schools own 75,000 acres of undeveloped land that could be used to build 2.3 million units. Thurmond wants to see these units built over the next eight years as a way to address California’s teacher shortage.
Citing overwhelming interest in this matter, the California School Boards Association’s presentation on the topic this month noted that 158 of about 1,000 school districts have expressed interest in providing affordable housing for education staff. Eight districts already provide housing or have housing under construction, while the vast majority of the rest are in the early stages of exploring it.
The California School Boards Association (CSBA) has created a map showing the status of housing projects across the state:
Recruiting and retaining school staff
State and local officials say that building housing goes a long way toward solving many of the problems both schools and other Californians face. Salaries of school staff are often far below the median rent in many areas, which creates difficulties finding or retaining staff. That leads to long commutes for staff whose household budgets are already stretched thin.
Many districts dealing with declining enrollment and associated financial woes consider selling off some of their land, a valuable resource in California, for short-term gain, according to Andrew Keller, senior director of operations and strategic initiatives for CSBA.
Developing housing on that land instead makes a dent in California’s affordability crisis and helps retain teachers, while also offering school districts a new stream of no-strings-attached funding. Schools can typically rent far below market value while still earning income that can support them long-term, Keller said.
Jefferson Union High School District found no shortage of staff members interested in their affordable housing. The district currently has a waitlist of 30 members. Thurmond would also like to see legislation that would allow districts to open their units to the wider community because students and their families are also struggling with the affordability of California.
In Los Angeles, LAUSD has three projects with 185 units that serve its employees — and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district is surveying employees and considering opening more affordable housing on 10 sites. But the district has also launched a project aimed at helping local families in concert with Many Mansions, a local nonprofit. The Sun King Apartments is a 25-unit facility that offers permanent supportive housing to chronically homeless families with children enrolled in LAUSD schools.
Even school districts that led the trend said it was a struggle to make the pitch to the community. Richard Barrera, a San Diego Unified School District board member, said community members would be confused about why the district would need to get into the housing business.
“If we don’t recruit and retain educators, we can’t do our job as educators,” Barrera said.
San Diego Unified has a goal of opening up 1,500 affordable units to house 10% of its staff, thanks to a school bond measure that passed in 2022, Barrera said.
Thurmond would like to see legislation that creates even more financial incentives for districts to build housing, which might help those seeking bond measures to fund projects. He noted that educator housing is also eligible for the $500 million in available annual housing tax credits from the state.
Some school districts have had trouble convincing voters that building housing for teachers and staff is worth it. In 2020, school bond measures for staff housing failed at Patterson Joint Unified School District in Stanislaus County, Soledad Unified in Monterey County and East Side Union High School District in Santa Clara County.
Even Jefferson Union High School District eked out a narrow win with just over the 55% requirement needed to pass.
“The community didn’t quite understand what it was that we were doing,” Lie said, “but it passed.”
Lie said that staff morale has improved, and the district can now rely on veterans to stick around and build on their success in Jefferson Union High School District, demonstrating why affordable housing for staff is so important to student success.
“We can’t give our best to our students if our educators are struggling with housing insecurity,” he said.
Resources for districts
CSBA has joined forces with researchers to create resources for districts interested in building housing — to help overcome one of the biggest concerns about school districts lacking expertise in building housing, Keller said.
Researchers want to make the process as easy as possible for schools, said Manos Proussaloglou, assistant director at UCLA’s cityLAB, including preparing guides, based on lessons learned both from both successful and unsuccessful projects.
“We’re really interested in learning why some educational workforce housing projects start but then stall — and see if we can learn from those,” Proussaloglou said.
To expedite the process of building, researchers from the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley have created a map that homes in on the communities that will most benefit.
“Ultimately, those are the districts we really want to work with and make sure they understand that it is an opportunity to address those challenges,” said Sara Hinkley, the California program manager at the Center for Cities + Schools.
The calculations behind the map by UC Berkeley are where Thurmond got the number of 2.3 million potential units in the state. That figure assumes that every extra acre of developable land a school district owns could support 30 units.
The map tallies the surplus property California school districts own, considering factors such as how many are on school campuses or completely undeveloped sites and whether those sites are close to amenities like public transit, while also accounting for annual teacher turnover rate, the demographics of the school, enrollment and the gap between staff salaries and median rents.
“We know that until we can pay teachers and classified staff better — which is our priority, that building affordable housing for them is an important tool for educator recruitment and retention,” said Thurmond.
