San Diego Unified wants to build affordable housing for employees with the last bond

San Diego United latest bond offering – the fourth in the last 14 years – contains many similar items from the previous measures, but one completely new priority is housing for employees.

If the bond passes, the district will allocate more than $206 million in Measure U funds for the “acquisition and construction of teacher and staff housing and related facilities.” This could make SDUSD one of the first districts in the county to build housing for its employees.

Like many Californians, the state’s housing costs have hit teachers and school staff hard. According to A 2019 EdSource Analysis, first-year teachers were particularly affected. In an email, Samer Naji, SDUSD communications manager, wrote that rising housing costs have made it difficult for San Diego teachers to live near the schools they work in, and that building housing can help retain and recruit staff.

Nagy wrote that SDUSD plans to use potential bond funds to build on district-owned land in University Heights, where its central office is now located. He plans to move that office to the Kearny Mesa building in the coming years purchased in 2019. This University Heights project can produce up to 500 units.

At public meetings, officials said the potential employee housing project would include community amenities and restoration of the Normal School addition, which was originally built in 1910. The county has not finalized the concept design for the project and plans to hold additional public meetings before doing so. The district also plans to build affordable housing at the former Polk Avenue Central Elementary School site in City Heights once construction is complete new facilities adjacent to Wilson Middlejust across Interstate 15.

According to Zillow, the average monthly rent in San Diego is about $2,600 for one-bedroom apartments, or $31,000 a year, and the average sales price is now about $950,000. Meanwhile, the district says that the average annual salary of teachers is about $88,000. The average price for all SDUSD non-certified employees, which includes workers who do not have teacher certifications and typically make lower wages, such as janitors and clerical workers, is about $41,000. This means that even relatively well-paid teachers will spend more than one-third of their income on a room, while non-certified staff will have to spend nearly three-quarters.

Although no area in the county currently provides housing for employees, the idea is gaining traction locally throughout the state. Currently, there are only about five projects in the works in California, but dozens more local education agencies, which could be either school districts or county boards of education, are either building housing or have expressed interest, said Troy Flint, the company’s chief information officer. California School Boards Association.

San Diego Community College District, too works to create an employee and a student housing on the San Diego City College campus with state grants rather than bonds. And in 2020 Chula Vista almost passed bond measure that provided $65 million to build about 100 units of affordable housing for employees of the Chula Vista Elementary School District. Giovanna Castro, Chula Vista Elementary’s communications officer, said in an email that no action has yet been taken on staff housing, but that “CVESD is in the early stages of looking at possible housing project options for staff”.

In addition to Chula Vista’s 2020 bond, districts across California have introduced bond measures similar corpus elements in the bulletin in recent years. About two-thirds of them passed. Flint said the bonds are an attractive option for financing employee housing because they allow projects to be developed without requiring counties to touch existing revenue streams.

“Each … school district or county board of education has to decide what makes sense for them,” Flint said. “But overall, I think we can expect an increase in bonds as more districts across the state pursue educational housing projects.”

California struggles with housing affordability and the urgent need to produce more housing to alleviate high costs over the years. San Diego has met state requirements to come up with a plan to increase its housing stock, but not yet still terribly lacking production of the required number of units. Either way, Flint believes progress has been too slow and local educational institutions need to take action on their own.

“I think there’s a growing recognition that the state is failing to address this issue in a timely manner or to meet the urgency that this issue deserves, and school districts can’t wait for the state to play the role of savior in terms of broad policy influence,” he said. Flint.

“This is not a substitute for strong action in the state legislature to promote affordable housing, but it is something that is under the control of districts to do at the local level to make a difference while the state begins to accelerate housing production.”

The San Diego Education Association, the union that represents SDUSD teachers, supported Measure U. Kyle Weinberg, union president, said the high cost of housing in San Diego is one reason for the current vacancies. The district supported this opinion.

“To be able to live in the communities that we serve is very exciting for us, and to be regional leaders in that,” Weinberg said. “Hopefully this is just the first of many affordable housing projects in school districts and municipalities.”

But Weinberg also believes that any housing project developed with taxpayer-funded bonds must have strong oversight and accountability measures and be developed with input from communities, faculty and staff outside of SDEA.

“Since we’re not going to be the only ones living in that house, it could end up being the majority of our non-union workers,” Weinberg said, referring to the non-certified employees who make up the majority of SDUSD’s workforce, who often make less than their counterparts. . “So we need everyone’s voice in how this housing is implemented.”

In an email, the county wrote that all county employees can qualify for housing, but they may give priority to individuals and families with lower incomes.

Flint is also bullish on the benefits of housing, which he says can help not only with affordability but also with workforce stability, especially at schools with high numbers of low-income students that traditionally have high teacher turnover. But he cautions that educational institutions need to be mindful of local development regulations and do thorough community impact research on things like traffic from new developments.

Despite resolutely resist some past bond measures, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association endorsed the measure. W. Hani Hong, president of the organization, said they support it because the county has promised not to release controversial capital increase bonds, and instead of increasing the current tax rate, Measure U would simply extend it. The organization is also sensitive to the need to create universal transitional kindergarten infrastructure and improve campus security. However, Hong is ambivalent about including housing in the bond spending priorities. He believes SDUSD’s entry into the property management business could have some benefits, but he is concerned about how the money will ultimately be spent.

“When you have already tight school budgets … this potentially creates a source of revenue that can then be used to address chronic maintenance issues that school districts have,” Hong said.

SDUSD currently has about tens of millions of dollars in unfunded maintenance each year, which has grown and grown over time. The new revenue streams, potentially from the rent the district would charge, could mean less need for future bonds, Hong said. But whether this money will be spent on maintenance is his main problem.

“When a school district starts making that money, what’s to stop them from just putting it toward something bigger, like paying aid instead of maintenance?” Hong said. “Buildings, don’t cry, don’t appear on the value board, and don’t put people in the office.”

In an email, the county said bond-financed projects are not intended to be for-profit, but housing projects created in partnership with developers can generate income that can be “reinvested to improve educational opportunities for students.”

The growing momentum has been fueled by a series of bills encouraging an educational workforce, housing development. The Teacher Housing Act of 2016 allowed districts to create affordable housing for employees without requiring the housing to be affordable for others, and educational institutions became eligible for low-income housing tax credits to build the projects.

More recently, Newsom signed legislation allowing districts to build housing on district-owned land without the need for rezoning this land must meet the various conditions of the project.

The push is also fueled by one thing that local educational institutions seem to have in abundance – land. According to A 2021 study, every county in California has land owned by a local education agency where housing can be built. The 7,068 properties with more than one acre of developable land total more than 75,000 acres, roughly five times the size of Manhattan.

With this potential for development, Flint believes the momentum to build teacher and staff housing on land owned by local education agencies will only increase in the coming years.

“Housing affordability is so far out of step with the number of new units coming online, and I don’t think that’s going to go away any time soon,” Flint said.

“San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose… I expect most areas of this profile to be developed or in fairly advanced stages over the next decade opening of housing projects for educational workers. .”