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At one point, Cassidy Proctor, a social studies teacher in the Montezuma-Cortez district in southwest Colorado, spent half her $44,000 salary on housing costs. Leah Corporal, a district teacher recruited from the Philippines, said she rents a single room in a family’s house for $750 a month.
Forty miles away, a local nonprofit helped Nathan Van Arsdale, who works at the Durango district’s career center, with a down payment on his 450-square-foot condo.
These are a few of the stories highlighted in a new report from the Keystone Policy Center on the shortage of affordable housing for Colorado educators and district staff. It’s based on survey results from more than 3,200 respondents in 10 Colorado districts. The report doesn’t name all the participating districts, but Van Schoales, Keystone’s senior policy director, said they include urban, suburban, mountain resort, and remote rural districts.
Several of the educators featured in the report cite the negative impacts of pricey or hard-to-find housing: long commutes, crowded living conditions, and living paycheck to paycheck. Ultimately, these kinds of problems lead to teacher turnover.
Finding affordable housing has long been a problem for Colorado teachers — sometimes because there’s simply no housing available and other times because the cost of available units is too high. The average teacher salary in Colorado was about $73,000 last school year, with district averages ranging from $37,000 in the tiny Vilas district in the southeast corner of the state to $100,000 in Boulder Valley. Colorado’s median single family home price was $590,000 in July, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.
One of the Keystone report’s key findings is that many teachers spend too much of their income on housing. In four districts that participated, more than half of survey respondents spend over 40% of their income on housing — well above the 30% level that’s a common rule of thumb.
Schoales said keeping housing costs under that threshold is especially important for middle-income earners.
“Obviously, if you’re making a million dollars a year, if you want to spend a third [on housing], you still have a lot of discretionary income,” he said. “But for teachers and for cops and firefighters, it’s a real problem.”
Greg Meshell, a middle school math teacher in Cortez, said before a recent pay raise, he was spending 47% of his salary on housing not including utilities, according to the report.
“After the raise, it still accounts for about 42% of my salary,” said Meshell, who earns about $60,000 a year plus stipends from coaching.
Schoales said one of the report’s findings that most surprised him was that 70% of survey respondents said they’d be comfortable with their school district as their landlord.
“If you had asked me a couple of years ago if teachers would be interested in workforce housing, I would say very, very few,” he said.
The report highlights a couple districts that have provided housing to teachers for many years. One is Byers 32-J east of Denver, which manages 10 apartments and two houses for employees. The district touts lower rental costs as a benefit to try to draw teachers. For example, according to the report, the district recently purchased a three-bedroom, one-bath house with a garage, carport, and yard, which it rents to teachers for $400 a month.
“We don’t have a lot of turnover. When my teachers are there, they realize the benefit, and there’s a lot of loyalty that comes with that,” said Superintendent Tom Turrell, according to the report.
Schoales noted that some school districts partner with groups that oversee workforce housing, so they may technically own the units, but don’t have day-to-day oversight.
“It’s not quite like … a mining company from 100 years ago where if they don’t like you, they can throw you out,” he said.
The Keystone report includes four recommendations to help solve the teaching housing problem. One advocates for an outside group of consultants that can help school districts think through possible solutions. Another recommends more state support to bring districts,especially small rural ones, together to build workforce housing.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
