Education Week - May 2, 2018 - 13

In Some Markets, Housing Costs Pinch School Employees
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for rent or cannot afford to buy
homes where they work.
Housing costs are a concern not
just for rookie teachers and other
lower-salaried employees but also for
principals and other district leaders-
a pressure that is forcing school systems to think up new ways and partnerships to meet their workers' needs.

In Colorado's Roaring Fork district
in Glenwood Springs, about 41 miles
from Aspen, officials have already
built low-cost housing for teachers.
More than a decade ago, officials in
the Santa Clara, Calif., district, in
the heart of Silicon Valley, where
housing costs are some of the highest
in the country, opened what would
ultimately become 71 affordable oneand two-bedroom apartments for
teachers.
"This is a problem that's shared by
all members of our team," Tom Boasberg, the superintendent in Denver,
said. "It's an acute concern for our
teachers; it's an acute concern for
our bus drivers, our custodians, our
paraprofessionals, our school psychologists."
In addition to Denver's skyrocketing housing prices-in March, the
median price of a single-family home
was $459,500, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors-
Colorado's per-pupil funding has
lagged behind the nation's average by
nearly $2,500. And in the eight years
since the Great Recession ended, the
state's school funding levels still have
not rebounded, Boasberg said.
Just last week, Colorado lawmakers dropped a proposed funding
formula that would have sent more
money to school districts, providing more resources to pay district
employees. Hundreds of the state's
teachers flooded the state Capitol
late last week for a two-day walkout
to press the legislature to boost school
funding.
In a recent survey, three-quarters
of the district's teachers said that
housing affordability was an important factor in deciding whether
they would continue to teach in the
school system, and the same percentage said they would be interested in
applying for a down-payment-assistance program if that option were
available, Boasberg said. The base
salary for newly hired teachers is
roughly $42,000 annually.
That survey, along with a report
by the Denver-based Donnell-Kay
Foundation on how high housing
prices affect teacher retention, was
part of what led Denver to work with
Landed, a Silcon Valley startup that
specializes in offering down payments
to people who work for school districts
in jurisdictions where housing prices
have increased in recent years.
The company has helped nearly 50
educators-all of them in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Marin County,
and Orange County, Calif.-make
down payments on homes. While the
majority are teachers, some are principals, others work as support staff
and in district facilities and athletics

Preston Gannaway for Education Week

'Acute Concern'

departments, said Alex Lofton, the
company's co-founder. The company
has also offered home owner classes to
a larger number of educators, he said.

Creative Solutions
States and cities have long operated affordable rental- and homebuyer-assistance programs for which
some teachers and district workers
qualify. But in some of those cases,
administrators and veteran teachers
earn too much to qualify, and some of
the terms can make such programs
unappealing to applicants.
New Jersey, until recently, offered
a Live Where You Work program,
which provided low-interest loans to
qualified homebuyers to buy homes
in the cities where they work. Many
teachers and school-based employees
would have qualified for the program,
which in some cases had a maximum
income limit of $100,000 for a twoperson household.
The city of San Francisco also already has a down-payment-assistance loan program, as well as one to
help teachers pay for closing costs on
home purchases.
While housing affordability is
often the challenge in high-cost
urban districts, lack of housing and
poor quality of the housing stock are
often the headaches in rural areas,
said Robert Mahaffey, the executive director of the Rural School and
Community Trust.
As a result, a program like Landed
may not work in helping to recruit
and retain teachers in rural areas,
Mahaffey said.
However, a comprehensive investment program that includes help for
not just educators but also returning
military veterans, small business
owners, and health-care workers may
incentivize builders and contractors
to build new housing or restore the

ones already there. Teaching villages,
such as one in McDowell County,
W.Va., can also help, he said.
The Miami-Dade project, which
envisions about 300 apartment units
as part of a new middle school complex, is still being refined. But the
proposal gives a hint at how complex it can be when school districts
wade into housing. The county housing agency is involved, along with a
private developer who will build the
units. The project will also receive
money from a special taxing district
in which the school is located, according to the Miami Herald.
Meanwhile, the Denver district is
working with the city to expand affordable-housing options, and it's reviewing its building inventory to see
whether unused or underused district property could be used for housing, Superintendent Boasberg said.
Veteran teachers and principals
who do not qualify for many of the
city's affordable-housing programs
because they make too much money
may be able to take advantage of the
Landed program.
The company's foray into Denver-its first outside of California-
was helped by a $5 million investment from the Denver-based Zoma
Foundation. The money will be used
to make the down payments on the
homes.
Landed provides half the down
payment, up to $70,000. When the
homeowner sells the house, Landed
collects 25 percent of the profit. If
the value depreciates, the company
shares in the loss. Landed is a forprofit company that collects referral
fees from real estate agents whom
they connect with clients who've already got their financing lined up.
Lofton acknowledged that his
company's program will not help all
educators: They still have to come up
with their half of the down payment.

But the program provides an entry
point for many who do not have family wealth to tap into. About half the
people who have used Landed are
those of color, Lofton said.
"It's really been the bank of mom
and dad. ... [That's] how a lot of people
have been able to purchase their first
home," Lofton said. "They get support from family, and that support,
unfortunately, is limited to families
that have been able to build wealth
for generations and generations."

Getting Into the Game
Corey Kern, the deputy executive
director of the Denver Classroom
Teachers Association, is skeptical
that Landed will have a big impact
on teachers in a district where owning a home has become a "fairy tale"
and some teachers need roommates
to pay the rent.
"It's really a smart move for Landed
because the Denver market is growing really fast; it's a good PR move
for the district," Kern said. "But for
teachers, I think there is a very low
number of folks who will be able to
participate."
Still, the union has sent program
information to its members, and
union brass met with Landed before
the program was announced in April.
"I think that stuff's good Band-Aid
stuff to talk about in the meantime,
but the fact of the matter is folks
work hard to become teachers and
care a lot about people's children, and
they should be paid with respect,"
Kern said.
Dy, 35, a special education teacher
in the Sequoia Union school district
in Redwood City, Calif., about 30
miles south of San Francisco, and her
partner, Jen, 34, a police officer, used
Landed to come up with the down
payment to buy their $975,000 townhouse in San Francisco's Mission

Dy, at left, and Jen, eat a meal in the
San Francisco home they bought
with a program that helps teachers
come up with down payments. Dy is a
teacher and Jen is a police officer.

District. (Their surnames are being
withheld to protect the home security
of the police officer.)
With an annual income of about
$200,000, the two still had trouble
coming up with the down payment
for a home in a city flush with Silicon
Valley cash and where the median
home price in March was $980,000.
"We needed a down payment," Dy
said. "We have great credit; we are
super-responsible; we have secure
jobs; we have secure incomes. ... We
were great on paper for all of that. We
almost have zero debt."
The couple, who now has two children, had tried other affordable-housing programs the city offered, but either fell out of the income brackets as
their salaries increased or got stuck
in red tape.
Until they heard about Landed,
they had been resigned to staying in
their $2,300 per-month one-bedroom
rental-with two kids, a dog, and a
cat-until the walls [were] falling
off," they said.
Even with the agreement that
they must pay back the company 25
percent of the appreciation on the
value of their home if they sell it,
the couple said it's a worthy investment. The money will be used to
help other civil servants live where
they work, they said.
"We just needed to get into the
game," Dy said. "We had no access
to this game that creates wealth in
this country. The system is just very
inequitable to people who don't come
from money or have money to invest
in real estate. We thought of this as
investing in ourselves."

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