REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Redwood City School District’s Board of Trustees is deciding whether to construct affordable housing for staff as the district struggles to employ local teachers in one of the nation’s most expensive zip codes.
RCSD joins a growing list of Silicon Valley schools starting to address teacher woes through new housing developments.
At a workforce housing study session on Nov. 2, the Board of Trustees displayed plans to convert its district office in downtown Redwood City into a 10-story housing complex containing 108 apartment units for teachers and school staff. Rent would be no more than 70% of market rates in the area.
The Board has not yet made a final decision to build the project, but they’ve taken a series of actions since 2020, including approving a feasibility study and submitting a joint development request to Redwood City in conjunction with the real estate firm, Sobrato.
The Bay Area’s high cost of living has made it impossible for many teachers to afford to live in the areas where they teach. A recent Redfin report found only 12% of teachers can afford homes for sale within a 20-minute drive from work as wages stagnate and inflation rises.
In the last few years, RCSD has struggled to hire and retain staff amid a worsening affordability crisis. They have resorted to hiring international employees as longtime workers struggle to stay on. For the 2023-2024 school year, the district hired 53 teachers and paraprofessionals from abroad, but still had six vacant positions when classes began this fall.
At the study session, Maria Stockton, an office assistant at Clifford School and a district employee for more than 40 years, revealed that all but $200 of her paycheck goes towards rent each month.
As a leader for the local unit of the California School Employees Association, she’s witnessed the people who make schools run – custodians, food workers, office staff and tech support – struggling to make ends meet.
“We have all kinds of international people working here now because we could not build classified and teaching positions. This district is doing the best they can but they need help for the staff. We are leaving because it’s too expensive here in Redwood City,” Stockton said.
Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker is a proponent of the workforce housing project and believes it can be the first step to solving staff shortages. “This is one of the ways that we’ll get teachers in the door and get them to stay with us,” he said.
Affordable Housing Under Construction
As RCSD mulls whether to construct employee housing of their own, several other Silicon Valley communities – Palo Alto, Mountain View, Daly City and San Francisco – are already in the final stages of creating workforce housing.
In August, crews broke ground in Palo Alto on a 110-unit complex for local teachers and staff. Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian proposed the idea in 2018 after a series of teacher town halls made it clear California’s affordability crisis was hitting educators hard.
“We have teachers and other school staff who are literally spending three or four hours a day commuting to and from their place of work, and that is, by definition, time not spent working with or for students,” Simitian said.
The teacher housing complex in Palo Alto is expected to be completed in 2025. The apartments will be allocated to staff at several local school districts in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. No waiting list or application process is available yet for school employees interested in becoming residents.
Just six miles away in Mountain View, Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph has pushed for nearly a decade to create a 123-unit workforce housing complex for Mountain View Whisman School District employees.
Rudolph was inspired to take on the project shortly after he took the superintendent position. While looking for an apartment in the area, he recalled being gobsmacked when a leasing agent told him a two-bedroom place was $5,500 per month.
“I remember looking at her like, what else comes with the $5,500, free transportation and limo driver? She just sort of laughed it off. But before I told her I was the superintendent of schools, I told her I worked for the school district. And the next thing she said was, could you afford it?” Rudolph recalled.
By early 2025, teachers and staff at MVWSD will be able to move into the building located at 777 West Middlefield Road. Apartments will feature wood floors and high-end appliances with several laundry rooms throughout the building. Some units will have views of the mountains, Rudolph said.
Teacher Housing Gaining Ground
A 2022 report on Education Workforce Housing in California, found that 43% of school districts have early career educators who qualify as low income.
Most school districts are unable to raise teachers’ salaries due to strained budgets, but workforce housing may be a more viable option. According to the report, every county in the state has land owned by school districts that could be developed into housing.
Jeff Vincent, director of the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the report, noted most districts have pieces of property, such as bus barns or maintenance facilities that don’t have schools on them.
“There’s opportunities there to use those parcels or re-reimagine those pieces of land that might include workforce housing on them,” he said.
Despite having available land, it can be difficult to get developments off the ground. Oftentimes extraneous land is nestled in single-family, low-density neighborhoods where locals may be resistant to multi-floor apartment buildings being built on their block, Vincent said.
But interest in these opportunities is growing. In a recent outreach effort, the Center for Cities + Schools, UCLA’s cityLAB and the California School Boards Association found that 70 school districts were seriously considering building workforce housing.
Success at 705 Serramonte
A handful of sites have already made teacher housing a reality in Northern California.
More than 20 years ago in 2001, Santa Clara Unified School District was one of the first districts in the state to create affordable apartments for staff. They built a 70-unit apartment complex called Casa Del Maestro.
More recently, in 2022, Support Teacher Housing, a workforce housing advocacy group in the Bay Area, teamed up with the city of Los Gatos to open four affordable units for local teachers as part of a pilot program.
Last year, Jefferson Union High School District completed a 122-unit complex in Daly City. Since May 2022, more than 100 Jefferson Union teachers have moved into new units located at 705 Serramonte Blvd. Residents pay subsidized rates and are allowed to stay in housing for a maximum of five years.
Within 18 months of opening, the building is now at 100% capacity and the district has been fully staffed for the past two school years.
Sarika Robinson, one of the residents and a new science teacher at Westmoor High School, says she loves the reduced rent, dog-friendly apartments and close-knit community she’s found in the building. She now imagines teaching in the district for “a good chunk of years.”
RCSD Inches Closer to Decision
Redwood City School District plans to make a final determination on whether to create workforce housing by summer 2024.
RCSD Superintendent John Baker remains hopeful the project will come to fruition. “There has not been a decision to move forward, but I truly believe it will be built,” he said.
The Board intends to fund the multi-million-dollar project through three sources: an approved 2022 school improvement bond known as Measure S, private funds and loans that would be paid back through rent revenue.
Conceptual plans have already been submitted for city review. Under the proposal, district offices would be built on the first two levels followed by apartments on the upper eight levels. Residents would have access to community rooms, outdoor terraces and exercise facilities.
During the workforce housing meeting, RCSD teacher Erinn Washburn said they had never imagined buying a home in the area on their teacher’s salary. But that might change if workforce housing is built. “If I can pay less rent for five years and save that money, maybe I could eventually have a down payment for a house,” they said.
If the project is greenlit, the board anticipates construction to start in July 2026. If all goes to plan, the building would be finished by the end of 2028.
