California's Teacher Housing Crunch

EdSource Special Report

Rising rents in coastal California outpace teacher pay

Above: Teacher Sarah La Due at the Richmond, California home she shares with roommates.

Starting teachers shut out of affordable rents, data analysis shows

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The West Contra Costa Unified School District, serving some of the poorest neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, can use every excellent teacher it’s able to recruit.

That is why the decision by Sarah La Due to pack up and leave the district, just two years after winning a Teaching Excellence Award, hurts.

Teacher Sarah La Due at the Richmond, California home she shares with roommates.

But La Due, after five years in the district, is tired of living with two roommates and sharing a bathroom in order to afford housing. So this fall she will be teaching high school in Las Vegas instead of English at Fred T. Korematsu Middle School in El Cerrito.

“I’m a 35-year-old professional woman and I shouldn’t have to live with roommates,” La Due said. “Why am I sacrificing so much to live in the Bay when there are other cities with culture and good food?”

La Due is not alone in her frustration.

An EdSource analysis of teacher salaries and rents reveals just how crushing California’s housing crisis has become for many teachers.

Teachers at the bottom of the salary scale working in coastal or metro areas of the state are being shut out of affordable housing. Many are spending more than 30 percent of their salary on rent, the federal cutoff for affordable housing, the EdSource analysis reveals:

Nowhere is the gap between teacher pay and housing costs wider than in the Bay Area. Teachers earning an average salary in nearly 90 percent of districts in the region did not earn enough to rent an affordable two-bedroom apartment. In 47 Bay Area school districts the highest-paid teachers only earned enough for an affordable one-bedroom apartment.

For districts already grappling with teacher shortages, high housing costs pose one more obstacle to hiring. As a result of declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs after the economic downturn and teacher attrition, many districts can’t find enough fully credentialed teachers to fill their classrooms, according to the “Getting Down to Facts II” education research project released last year.

California’s Teacher Housing Crunch

This special report reveals just how crushing California’s housing crisis has become for many teachers. Find out how teachers are struggling to pay the rent and how districts are building housing to attract and keep them. Check out interactive app to find out what teachers can afford to rent in your school district or view statewide maps showing where teachers can afford to live. Check out teacher salaries in districts across the state and read more on EdSource’s analysis and how it was done.

The EdSource analysis compared teacher salary data from the California Department of Education and fair-market rent data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fair-market rent is the base price for a modest apartment in a given market, so those figures are likely to be lower than actual rents in high-cost communities.

La Due has been teaching for five years, starting as a Teach for America teacher in 2014. She earns $54,000 a year. To make extra cash to stretch her salary, she took on an extra class and drives for Lyft over the summer and during winter break.

“It’s still not enough,” she said.

Next school year, instead of paying $900 a month to rent a small bedroom and shared bathroom in Richmond, she can rent a two-bedroom apartment of her own for less than $1,000. She expects to make about the same salary.

The districts that pay enough for even their lowest-paid teachers to afford a two-bedroom apartment are almost entirely small districts in rural areas of the state. New teachers in Willows Unified in Glenn County and Tulelake Basin Joint Unified in Modoc County would pay about 16 percent of their salaries to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

California’s coastal communities, from the Bay Area to San Diego County, have the most expensive rents in the state, according to the EdSource analysis. First-year teachers in the Lompoc Unified School District, near Santa Barbara, spend 40 percent of their pay for a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, about $1,600. Farther down the coast, in the Carlsbad Unified School District, north of San Diego, a 10-year teacher has to spend about 41 percent of his or her salary to afford a three-bedroom apartment at the fair market rent of about $2,600 per month.

San Diego teacher Arnold Fenton

Elementary teacher Arnold Fenton, 28, spends about a quarter of his $69,000 salary on his portion of the rent for a two-bedroom apartment he shares with his partner and a roommate in the Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego. The total rent is $2,140.

It’s less than he paid for a one-bedroom before, but the trade-off is a roommate and a 40-mile commute to Arroyo Vista Charter School in Chula Vista — where he teaches kindergarten — doubling his insurance and requiring him to buy a new car.

“I have to deal with children all day and sometimes I come home and have to get after him (the roommate) to do the dishes,” Fenton said. “There are days I grind my teeth and try not to lash out. Sometimes they bring friends over and I have just come back from work and I don’t want to deal with people who are rowdy.”

Fenton said he has thought of leaving the profession he has been in for six years in order to earn more money. Instead, he plans to earn his administrative credential and become a district or school administrator in five or 10 years.

The couple also have considered relocating. “We talk about Portland,” he said. “We talk about south Seattle. The cost is relatively cheaper than here.”

The situation is even more dire for new teachers, who have less money to spend on housing and other necessities.

Roxana De La O Cortez, 25, who teaches 5th grade at Oakland’s dual immersion Manzanita SEED Elementary School, moved back to her family’s two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Hayward in June.

She lives with her parents, her 23-year-old sister and 18-year-old brother. Her living quarters — a loft-style bed, bookcase and a portable clothing rack — take up half the living room. The bed has a built-in shoe rack and space underneath for the bins filled with De La O Cortez’s belongings.

“It is disappointing and it’s heartbreaking,” she said of the situation, which includes a 40-minute commute to work.

De La O Cortez had been living with another teacher in Oakland, but she couldn’t afford the $1,100 monthly rent, bills and $1,100 monthly tuition for a master’s degree on her then $47,000 salary, and still save for her dream of buying a house.

Things got financially worse for De La O Cortez in October when she lost her provisional internship permit and was bumped down to substitute pay — about $170 a day — after she failed one of the tests required to earn a teaching credential. Teachers on internship permits must pass all the required tests within a year of receiving their permit or it is revoked.

She’s hoping to fulfill her dream of home ownership in either Sacramento or Stockton in two or three years.

Housing advocate Sarah Chaffin, founder of Support Teacher Housing.org, would like to see Bay Area teachers living in the communities in which they teach, but it isn’t easy. Teachers usually earn too much to qualify for typical subsidized housing programs and don’t make enough to rent a median-priced apartment or buy a home, she said.

California residents caught in the middle — between low and high incomes — spend a substantial amount of their salaries on housing, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report on the governor’s 2019-20 budget, which includes proposals to improve the affordability of housing in the state. About 1 million households at or above the state’s median income — earning above $70,000 annually — are cost burdened, meaning they are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, the report states.

High housing costs impact everyone in the Bay Area, Chaffin said. “We need more moderate-income housing for everyone — teachers, social workers, dispatchers,” she said.

Joel Smith, 40, a high school ceramics teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, started hunting for a house two years ago. He didn’t have much of a down payment, so he needed to find something in the $250,000 range.

The median-priced house in Sacramento County and the city of West Sacramento in February of 2019 was $360,000, up from $260,000 in 2014, according to the Sacramento Association of Realtors. The increase in the cost of housing in Sacramento has been attributed, in part, to the number of Bay Area refugees moving to the city.

“All the houses we can afford are in dangerous neighborhoods,” Smith said. The family looked anyway. They discovered they had to bid for homes against numerous potential buyers, many offering well above the asking price.

Smith shares a $1,150-a-month, 800-square-foot one-bedroom duplex with his partner, Kaytie Hensley — a full-time college student — and their son. It’s tight quarters, but the family has little choice.

He’d like to save more money for a down payment to buy a house in a better neighborhood. As the sole family income and with student loan debt, Smith said he doesn’t feel like he can get ahead.

“It’s pretty hard to save money when you barely make it month to month,” Smith said.

Smith has been teaching for seven years and earns $53,000 a year. He supplements his income by teaching an extra period at the end of the school day, as well as summer school and Saturday school.

The high cost of housing in California has pushed many teachers, as well as residents in other professions, out of state in search of less-expensive housing, according to an EdSource analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Between 2013 and 2017 the Census Bureau estimates that 40,000 teachers left the state, although it is not clear that they left because of housing costs. That was an increase of 22 percent over the previous five-year period. In 2017 the most popular destination was Texas, followed by Oregon, Washington and Arizona.

Housing costs were definitely part of the equation as teachers staged strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, said Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association. “It is impacting everybody. The raises they were asking for were nowhere near going to meet their needs — to afford rent or put food on the table or pay their mortgage or anything like that.”

Despite her excitement at the new opportunity in Las Vegas, La Due, a native Californian, is sad to be leaving the state. She said almost every young teacher she knows has a short-term plan to move somewhere that costs less or pays more.

She doesn’t blame the school district. Teachers in the West Contra Costa Unified District received a big pay raise recently, but it was not enough to offset the high cost of housing, she said.

“It was a good raise and I don’t think the district could pay us any more,” she said. “They literally don’t have the funds.”

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  1. Jay Miller 10 months ago10 months ago

    One problem that few in our state are addressing is that city leaders collect much less in tax revenue from residential real estate than they do from commercial developments. This means that for decades our leaders have preferred to attract new and expanding businesses to drive up their revenues and at the same time drive up demand for and cost of housing. At the same time our leaders have dramatically failed to ensure that the … Read More

    One problem that few in our state are addressing is that city leaders collect much less in tax revenue from residential real estate than they do from commercial developments. This means that for decades our leaders have preferred to attract new and expanding businesses to drive up their revenues and at the same time drive up demand for and cost of housing. At the same time our leaders have dramatically failed to ensure that the supply of housing keeps up with the growing demand they have created.

    The last census showed that cities around our state created 3 new jobs for every new housing unit in the 10 years leading up to 2020. A former classmate was a president of the League of California Cities a few years ago, and when I asked if they knew of any city in the state that I could point to as doing a good job of keeping supply and demand in balance, they said there was not one in the entire state. Many locations had enacted slow growth initiatives to control housing sprawl, but these only pushed the sprawl farther out instead of stopping it. The problem is that the slow growth was not applied to commercial development. It was only enacted with residential development instead. The economic concept of supply and demand is very simple, but it appears that most of our local leaders have forgotten how it applies to their housing markets.

    This is completely unsustainable but also appears to be difficult to reign in as many new workers are unable to vote in elections for the city in which they work. This is in essence a quintessential example of taxation without representation as new workers must drive farther and farther to find any sort of housing at all. In my extensive research on this housing affordability crisis, the only conclusion people have suggested to me is that we encourage new and growing businesses to only bring in new jobs to cities that can ensure an adequate supply of housing at all price points within 5-10 miles of the new jobs. We are so far behind right now in have supply catch up to demand, that no matter how fast we build new houses and apartments it will never be enough. Unfortunately this means things will continue to get worse unless we can find a way to convince businesses and local leaders to change their ways and agree to manage their budgets with a better balance of residential and commercial tax revenues rather than mostly commercial taxes. Maybe we need to convince our leaders that their children and grandchildren will not be able to live close to them unless they change their ways. I can’t think of anything else unless someone has a better idea.

  2. Valerie Gulston 4 years ago4 years ago

    Rent-burdened teachers should consider educational publishing sales. A friend shocked me recently when she told me that she earned over $150,000 years ago selling assessment tests in subject areas and career assessment batteries such as the Briggs Myers test! She worked for a publishing firm named Harcourt Brace and called on department chairs and principals!

  3. Laurie Dedmon 5 years ago5 years ago

    The person stating that teachers are paying 30% of their salary for rent is way off the mark. I worked in Fremont Unified, and it took two salaries to pay rent. It was 50% of our rent, and we had a run-down place. It was a 40-year-old house with a highly damaged fence and 1970s interior. No painting, shampooing and bad plumbing. My husband and I were living like we earned a lot less. If … Read More

    The person stating that teachers are paying 30% of their salary for rent is way off the mark. I worked in Fremont Unified, and it took two salaries to pay rent. It was 50% of our rent, and we had a run-down place. It was a 40-year-old house with a highly damaged fence and 1970s interior. No painting, shampooing and bad plumbing. My husband and I were living like we earned a lot less. If it was 30%, I would be jumping for joy.

    I moved to ugly and polluted Fresno with the highest cancer rates in the country. Out of state? I would do it now if I did not have family here. The average teacher only works about 5 years or less because it cost them too much college tuition to continue in education.

  4. Phyllis Orrick 5 years ago5 years ago

    Thanks for highlighting this study. An important component of the problem is that California has underfunded K-12 Ed for nearly half a century and got away with it until reality caught up and the pink collar ghetto of married women content with earnings secondary to their spouses became scarce. Key to this is reform of prop 13 AND massive injection of budget surplus to bring salaries in line with professional expectations. California currently ranks near the … Read More

    Thanks for highlighting this study. An important component of the problem is that California has underfunded K-12 Ed for nearly half a century and got away with it until reality caught up and the pink collar ghetto of married women content with earnings secondary to their spouses became scarce. Key to this is reform of prop 13 AND massive injection of budget surplus to bring salaries in line with professional
    expectations. California currently ranks near the bottom in per-pupil spending. Think school-to-prison pipeline and pay teachers salaries and benefits comparable to cops and correction officers. Check how the latters’ wages have fared over time. Keep up the good work. A good start. PS teacher housing is NOT the answer.

  5. Todd Maddison 5 years ago5 years ago

    Good analysis, but one big thing missing - are teachers any worse off than "everyone else" in California? If you compare the teacher pay with the median pay reported in the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey's "Educational Attainment" report and look at the income of comparably educated residents of the same areas, we find that teachers often make MORE than the median pay of those residents. In Oceanside - where I'm from, for instance - the … Read More

    Good analysis, but one big thing missing – are teachers any worse off than “everyone else” in California?

    If you compare the teacher pay with the median pay reported in the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey’s “Educational Attainment” report and look at the income of comparably educated residents of the same areas, we find that teachers often make MORE than the median pay of those residents.

    In Oceanside – where I’m from, for instance – the median pay for teachers in 2017, per the Transparent California public pay data – was $88,000/year. Meanwhile, if we look at the same educational mix of other SD County residents (assuming a mix of 42% bachelors/58% advanced degrees per 2016 CA LAO study) we see their average pay is about $79,000 – so teachers make about 10% MORE than comparably educated professionals.

    I don’t know if this is universally true, but a real examination of this – and any rational evaluation of whether this is a “problem” or simply a fact of life in California – would require an analysis of how teachers are doing relative to “everyone else”, not just an analysis of how things are in the education bubble….

  6. Laurie A Hilderbrand 5 years ago5 years ago

    Also, they do not mention that many teachers are kept at 50%,60%, or 80% FTE Contract which renders you unable to qualify for benefits at the 50-60 and even sometimes 80% range. So if you are only teaching 3 days a week that really hurts! Sadly they won't hire you on at full time. Honestly, earning a Masters Degree in Education does not help you at all in the San Francisco Bay Coastal areas which … Read More

    Also, they do not mention that many teachers are kept at 50%,60%, or 80% FTE Contract which renders you unable to qualify for benefits at the 50-60 and even sometimes 80% range. So if you are only teaching 3 days a week that really hurts! Sadly they won’t hire you on at full time. Honestly, earning a Masters Degree in Education does not help you at all in the San Francisco Bay Coastal areas which have some of the lowest pay in comparison to Silicon Valley and even Salinas who gain excessive funding based on socio-economic demographics. I am one of these teachers, I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have rental property income. I’d have to leave too. But still, I am paying well over 30% rent which leaves me broke. No vacation, No trips, No fun, No Life. When Is this going to change????? Why does our legislative and governmental agencies do nothing to help? GREED.

  7. GJ 5 years ago5 years ago

    This is exactly why, as other comments have mentioned, the LCFF needs to be adjusted for local cost of living. The vast majority of a school district’s budget goes to salaries, yet the only adjustments to LCFF are based on percentages of Unduplicated students. While additional funds are certainly needed for Unduplicated students, neglecting the higher cost of living in some parts of the state is simply unreasonable and illogical.

    Replies

    • Todd Maddison 5 years ago5 years ago

      That would only make sense, but logically that would that mean that districts in areas with a low cost of living would see a reduction in LCFF per student funding, offsetting the increase in districts with a high cost of living.

      • Jennifer Bestor 5 years ago5 years ago

        The trick here is to supplement -- not index -- for cost of living. Cost of living reflects the dynamism of the local economy. Less dynamic economies mean fewer opportunities for a spouse, summer jobs, teen children, etc. A flat LCFF funding structure provides extra opportunities (for teacher pay, yes, but also enrichment classes, counseling, nurses, etc.) for the least dynamic areas. At the high end, however, extra economic opportunity is … Read More

        The trick here is to supplement — not index — for cost of living. Cost of living reflects the dynamism of the local economy. Less dynamic economies mean fewer opportunities for a spouse, summer jobs, teen children, etc. A flat LCFF funding structure provides extra opportunities (for teacher pay, yes, but also enrichment classes, counseling, nurses, etc.) for the least dynamic areas. At the high end, however, extra economic opportunity is only so attractive — then it becomes a ball & chain, as this article demonstrates. The fascinating thing is that property tax already exists to pay about half the required supplement in California. $700 million in property tax revenue has already been collected and allocated to education — but is redistributed to other local governments since LCFF hasn’t kept up with property tax growth in these areas. (Check out the discovery, for example, of $415 million of “excess ERAF” in San Francisco last November.)

  8. Katherine 5 years ago5 years ago

    Educate Our State has proposed original cost supplement for LCFF for the counties for the highest cost of living in the state. More info here: http://www.educateourstate.org/impact

    Replies

    • Todd Maddison 5 years ago5 years ago

      Would that not logically mean that districts located in low-cost living areas would see their LCFF allocation per student decline, then? If one looks at the state's "J90" report of teacher compensation, there are often not huge differences between average pay rates between low cost areas vs. high cost areas, and if one browses the Transparent California database for administrative salaries - particularly Superintendent - one finds the same effect. If we're saying, for instance, that it … Read More

      Would that not logically mean that districts located in low-cost living areas would see their LCFF allocation per student decline, then?

      If one looks at the state’s “J90” report of teacher compensation, there are often not huge differences between average pay rates between low cost areas vs. high cost areas, and if one browses the Transparent California database for administrative salaries – particularly Superintendent – one finds the same effect.

      If we’re saying, for instance, that it is absolutely necessary to pay a Superintendent in SoCal $300,000/year because of the cost of living, does it not make logical sense that a Superintendent in the Central Valley might be OK with perhaps $150,000?

  9. Ann Tiedemann Halvorsen ,EdD 5 years ago5 years ago

    Surprised not to see any specific mention of San Francisco …likely the worst for anything affordable and always getting worse.

    Replies

  10. Michael Kirst 5 years ago5 years ago

    This article underlines that the state finance system may need to be adjusted for local differences in cost of living. New York, Texas and Florida all do this. I helped design the system in Florida in 1973 to adjust for the different costs in a state that spans the Alabama border to Miami.

    Replies

    • Todd Maddison 5 years ago5 years ago

      Which makes sense. Did your system result in lower per ADA spending in areas with lower costs, or was it just more money for higher cost areas…?