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Residential
San Francisco

Study finds 75k acres of school land ripe for affordable housing

A third of teachers are currently cost-burdened

(Thompson | Dorfman, iStock)
(Thompson | Dorfman, iStock)

Forget soccer and baseball – California has 75,000 acres of idle school land, more than San Francisco and Oakland combined, that could be turned into affordable teacher housing.

That’s the conclusion of a study cited by the Mercury News. About a third of teachers pay more than 30 percent of their income toward housing.

The Bay Area’s five main counties have 7,600 acres of property, including vacant lots, according to researchers from Berkeley, UCLA’s cityLAB and the California School Boards Association and paid for by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Santa Clara County has 3,084 acres, followed by Contra Costa’s 2,209 acres and Alameda County’s 1,367 acres.

“There seems like quite a lot of opportunity in every county,” said Jeff Vincent, director of the Center for Cities+Schools at UC Berkeley. “Virtually every neighborhood has one school in it.”

Along with the limited housing stock, schools are grappling with disruptions including teacher shortages and declining enrollment. According to online broker Redfin, the median pay for a teacher in San Francisco and the East Bay is about $86,000 and $90,000 for those in the San Jose metro area. The Bay Area median home price exceeds $1 million.

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“Addressing the housing affordability challenges that so many teachers face is an important step in both attracting and retaining teachers and improving outcomes for California’s students,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, the research director at Berkeley’s Terner Center.

Creating housing on school grounds hasn’t always been well-received. Daly City residents fought against a high-rise building that would replace a community garden in Jefferson Union High School District. The project was ultimately approved by the city.

Santa Clara Unified School District’s 70-unit Casa del Maestro reduced teacher attrition by two-thirds compared with other nearby districts, and some 80 percent of tenants stayed the full allowable rental term.

[Mercury News] — Gabriel Poblete

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Affordable Housing