So far, only a few school districts in the state have completed construction of new workforce housing. Santa Clara Unified School District is the first school district to build housing for its staff, according to the California School Boards Association. The housing complex, named Casa del Maestro, opened in 2002 and features 70 one- and two-bedroom apartments.
This summer, the Department of Education announced an initiative to help schools navigate the housing development quagmire.
In August, the California School Boards Association hosted a summit with school district officials, affordable housing advocates, and researchers to consider ways schools can more effectively build housing. More than 150 school districts in the state are currently in “some stage of developing housing on school district property,” said Department of Education spokesman Scott Rourke.
Troy Flint, a spokesman for the California School Boards Association, said school districts are in a good position to develop housing because they already own the land. And such projects tend to have shorter timelines than traditional affordable housing projects, he argued.
“Land and buildings owned by the school district are under the control of the school district, so the school district has a lot of autonomy,” he said. “We can go from concept to occupancy in as little as five years.”
Sanchez and others in the San Jose Unified School District are making concrete plans for where the new housing will be built if the bond passes.
One project will convert an empty parking lot into 75 studio and one-bedroom apartments with underground parking. Another plan would move the magnet school to a larger campus and use existing land to build about 120 apartments and townhomes. The third site will house educators’ housing at what is currently a special needs school.
The proposed site for educator housing on Lenzen Avenue. It is currently used as a staff parking lot for the San Jose Unified School District in San Jose. If approved, the project would create 75 studio and one-bedroom units. (Gina Castro/KQED)
The largest project will transform vacant land on the technical education campus into an estimated 300 two-bedroom apartments and townhomes. Sanchez said the money from Measure R could fund two of the smaller projects, or a 300-unit project.
But even if the bond measure were approved, the project would still have to go through each city’s complex and expensive permitting process.
And in Half Moon Bay, proposed housing has already caused consternation among neighbors, who fear the new development will be “out of character” with existing housing. Mike Alifano, a Half Moon Bay resident and former school bond oversight committee member, said this is the first bond measure in the district to address teacher housing.
“We’re a community that doesn’t really like change because we want to maintain the look and feel of the way things are,” he said. “There are other areas that (the school district) is looking at in different communities, and there has been a little bit of pushback in those communities.”
Sanchez said there have been plans to develop teacher housing in San Jose since 2020, but the district was forced to put the project on hold when the pandemic hit. But she said she didn’t want to wait any longer.
“We’re losing teachers across the state, but in this region we’re losing teachers at an alarming rate,” she said. “If we don’t do something soon, our children will suffer.”
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