Education Workforce Housing in California: Developing the 21st Century Campus

Many of California's public school teachers cannot afford to live in the communities where they work, forcing them to commute long distances or pushing them out of the education system altogether. Attracting new teachers has also grown more challenging. Housing prices have climbed across the state, yet the majority of the nearly one thousand local educational agencies (LEAs) in California offer entry-level teacher salaries below the Area Median Income. As housing affordability challenges intertwine with staffing challenges, more and more LEAs are considering building workforce housing on land they own. The Teacher Housing Act of 2016 authorizes California LEAs to pursue affordable housing for employees and shifts the playing field on development finance. LEAs can now address employee housing by leveraging a range of programs and fiscal resources available to other housing developers. This report provides an extensive review of the need for public education workforce housing solutions, where and how such strategies can--and are--being implemented, and recommendations to advance housing solutions on LEA-owned land. [Additional collaborators on this Research Report are cityLAB at the University of California Los Angeles and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.]