how housing affordability impacts school employees in California
TERNER CENTER FOR HOUSING INNOVATION UC BERKELEY
sHAZIA MANJI, PUBLISHED ON MARCH 1, 2022
The combination of stagnant incomes and California’s continually rising housing costs weighs heavily on public school employees across the state. Numerous recent headlines (see Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR, among others) highlight stories of teachers who are struggling to afford housing in the communities where they work, forcing them to take on long commutes or pushing them to leave the education sector altogether. These financial constraints contribute to the ongoing challenges California faces in attracting new teachers and have implications for students as well. Teacher recruitment and retention challenges negatively affect student achievement, especially in schools serving low-income and predominantly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.
California’s public school districts (also referred to as Local Education Agencies, or LEAs) own land in every county that could be used to create housing opportunities for their employees. Analysis from our new research report, Education Workforce Housing in California: Developing the 21st Century Campus—developed in collaboration with the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley, cityLAB UCLA, and the California School Board Association—sheds light on where and for whom housing affordability challenges may be particularly pronounced among the state’s public education workforce.
WHERE ARE CALIFORNIA’S TEACHERS STRUGGLING TO AFFORD HOUSING?
To better understand how school employee salaries across the state stack up against housing costs, we first analyzed where beginning teacher salaries for each school district fall in relation to their county’s median income, referred to as the Area Median Income (AMI). Benchmarking incomes to the local median helps account for geographic variation in the cost of living, including the cost of housing.
Beginning teacher salaries in California range from $30,000 to $84,500 per year. As Figure 1 shows, 43 percent of districts pay a beginning teacher salary that falls below 80 percent of AMI—a level that qualifies as “low income” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These districts employ nearly 18,000 beginning teachers.
Figure 1. Beginning Teacher Salary by Area Median Income
Source: California Department of Education Certificated Salaries & Benefits data, 2018-2019. The Department of Housing and Urban Development Income Limits data, 2018
These starting salaries translate into very weak purchasing power in many local housing markets, particularly in high-cost areas of the state. Half (52 percent) of California school districts are located in counties where someone earning the beginning teacher salary cannot afford the median asking rent without becoming rent-burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. This includes 81 districts that pay a middle-income (80-120 percent AMI) starting salary.
Click here or on the image to explore the interactive map on teacher salaries and housing affordability in school districts across California.
Click on the image to explore the interactive map on teacher salaries and housing affordability in school districts across California.
For example, Santa Clara Unified offers a starting salary of $73,103, but the median asking rent in Santa Clara County is $2,348, a full $500 above what would be considered affordable for a single-earner with that salary. A beginning teacher at Los Angeles Unified is considered low-income with a salary of $46,587, and cannot afford the Los Angeles County median asking rent of $1,472. For some, even the cost of a studio or one-bedroom unit is out of reach. At San Marcos Unified in San Diego, less than one third (30 percent) of the county’s studio and one-bedroom stock is affordable at the district’s starting salary. For a new teacher at South San Francisco Unified, only 11 percent of studio and one-bedroom units rent at an affordable price.
These housing pressures are most acute in coastal areas, but are of concern in other areas of the state as well. In the Sacramento Valley’s Yolo County, the median asking rent is not affordable for beginning teachers working at five of the county’s six school districts. Rental affordability is also a challenge for new teachers working at certain districts in Riverside County. For example, despite earning what HUD considers a middle-income salary, a new teacher at Desert Center Unified cannot afford the typical asking rent in the county.