School Districts Devising New Ways to Offer Teachers Affordable Housing

In a new wave of plans to recruit and retain teachers who say they cannot afford to buy or rent homes in pricey school districts, officials are considering measures that would put affordable housing within their reach.

In Nevada’s Clark County, for instance, school officials are considering buying land and building affordable homes they would sell to teachers. In Florida’s Osceola County, the school board is lobbying to team with developers and build apartments that teachers could rent at below-market rates. And in the San Luis Coastal Unified School District in San Luis Obispo, Calif., school leaders are looking into the possibility of offering short-term loans to teachers to make it easier for them to buy houses.

According to the latest figures available from the American Federation of Teachers, the average salary for a beginning teacher in the country was $31,700, and $46,600 for the average teacher, in 2003-04. “By the time they have paid for college loans, transportation, and insurance, there is not much left in the paycheck for housing,” said Jewell Gould, the...