Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
Canadian provinces and territories report persistent teacher shortages in certain areas of specialization, including French first language, French immersion, special education, and technology studies. Shortages in some specializations are more prevalent in rural and remote areas. Urban school districts say that housing costs are a deterrent to recruiting teachers.
Jefferson Union High School District is in Daly City, California, a community adjacent to San Francisco. Housing costs in San Francisco and adjacent Bay area communities are high and a deterrent to teacher recruitment. Jefferson Union High School District responded by building affordable housing for 122 of its teachers.
Providing affordable housing to teachers is not a new phenomenon. Affordable housing is difficult to find in many small, remote communities. In response, school districts provide housing (called “teacherages” in British Columbia). For example, the Vancouver Island West School District 84 in Gold River, BC provides teacherages in two communities Zeballos and Kyuquot on Vancouver Island. Universities often provide housing for faculty and students, often at below-market rents, and financial assistance with home ownership than is otherwise available in the marketplace.
Housing and rental prices in urban areas are unaffordable to many because of the value of the land. There are numerous instances in Vancouver of families selling their homes for $3.5 million or, even $5 million to buyers who tear down the home to build a new one.
Urban school districts are among the larger landholders in many urban areas. If they, like Jefferson Union High School District, used some of their land to build affordable teacher housing, they might better address teacher and staff shortages.
I know your thinking, “where will the Board get the money to build the housing?” The answer will vary from district to district. Some districts have under-used schools where the cost-per-student exceeds the cost in schools with larger student populations. Many – dare I say most – school districts have programs of choice they have not evaluated for their merit. The same is true for more costly programs in core areas; could the outcomes they produce be achieved with a less costly alternative?
Cost of construction in Canada’s urban areas ranges from $200-$400 per square foot. Imagine an urban district that would find $5million in savings. At – let’s take the higher cost - $400 per square foot, the district could build 12,500 square feet of housing. Assuming a three-bedroom unit size of 1000 square feet, the district could build 12 units. If the saving came from closing under used schools, the savings would be recurring, meaning that the district could build 12 units each year for as many years as the savings continue to occur.[1]
In the communities in and around where I live, the starting salary of a beginning teacher is around $60 thousand. Vancouver two-bedroom rents are around $3000/month. If the school district were to provide housing at the rent-geared-to-income percentage of 30%, the teacher earning $60,000 would be paying about $1700 per month. The school district would recoup $240,000/year in rental income for its 12 units.
Some school trustees are probably saying, “Oh, we couldn’t close small, under-used schools, eliminate programs of choice or programs no longer producing the outcomes for which they were designed, or substitute lower cost programming for more expensive programming.” My response to them is that making difficult policy decisions is precisely why we have school boards. Selecting among competing policy alternatives the one or ones in the best interest of the district is the Board’s responsibility.
Providing affordable housing for teachers will not solve the teacher shortage, but it would be an inducement for teachers with specializations that are desperately needed.
[1] Of course, there are other potential uses for any
savings and alternative ways of using the savings to finance construction if
the Board pursues that alternative.