Posted on 01/06/2017 6:28:38 AM PST by george76
Rising housing costs in Colorado are making it hard for teachers to stay in the area, so officials are moving in to help.
As Colorado’s housing costs skyrocket, a growing number of school districts, local leaders, and lawmakers are taking steps to make housing more affordable for teachers and staff.
For years, resort communities like Aspen, Colorado, and a rural district in the state’s Eastern Plains have leased housing to employees at below-market rates. More recently, subsidized housing for educators has cropped up in pricey urban areas such as San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore.
But lately, Colorado districts big and small are looking at building their own housing or collaborating with external partners to do so. Such projects are underway now in three rural districts, and Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest district, is exploring the idea.
Driving these plans are fears that recruiting and retaining good teachers will shift from hard to impossible as housing costs rise.
...
brings up lots of questions: Which employees get first dibs on the housing? Can some units be set aside for hard-to-fill positions? Will employees be allowed to stay in the units indefinitely? What happens if too few district staff need the housing?
...
school districts with subsidized housing double as landlords, either hiring property-management companies to handle leasing and maintenance or doing it themselves. Rose Cronk, the superintendent in the Woodlin district for more than a decade, said of the district-owned housing, “Sometimes I’m the one over there cleaning rainwater out of the bottom of the basement.”
In some districts now considering subsidized housing, administrators worry such projects could distract from their educational goals. Balczarek said one of the key questions for Denver is, “How do we get into this without drifting too far from our mission?”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
What is old is new again. Owing one’s soul to the company store?
Every artificial problem has a simple, easy to understand, wrong answer.
In this case the wrong answer helped cause the problem and keeps it from being solved.
Taxpayers will pay.
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Please add me to the list.
Thanks. Colocdn
um.. why not just pay them more so they can afford more expensive housing?
What happens if a teacher doesn’t want to live in the company’s housing and be consumed in group think. Of course, group think will happen and that may be the reason for company housing.
One would think giving teachers an across the board pay raise would be the simplest solution.
Subsidized housing your tax dollars at work but not for you.
Good question. As housing costs rise beyond the reach of teachers salaries I can see the problem.
Doesn’t the military give people a housing allowance, with that amount higher for those stationed in higher cost areas? Perhaps that could be a partial solution. Certainly schools have enough issues without operating housing for teachers.
Higher pay in high cost areas? Another idea to look at. Supply and demand should be a key factor in teacher salaries. If too many teachers turn down jobs in high cost areas, I can see salaries rise just based on supply and demand, with higher pay offered to increase their teacher supply.
Subsidized housing is one thing but it is wrong for the school district to own housing and rent it to teachers. Providing a housing subsidy is, in effect, increasing the teacher salary but if the district owns the housing, it puts a tax funded organization in direct competition with private enterprise. This is but one of several arguments against district owned housing.
It may all come back to pay scales.
In other businesses, recruiters have reported issues with getting employees to move to some high cost areas such as California. And the response has been that businesses have often decided to offer higher salaries in those high cost areas.
I wonder if there are tax implications if people get to live in subsidized housing such as described here.
You beat me to it!
The lefties want to keep the teachers and other staff dependent / talking politically correct / voting for Democrats.
If they leave the liberal plantation with conservative thoughts, then they risk losing their job and their housing.
Yes. George Soros approves.
Thanks.
You are added.
Much appreciated.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ There is the rub. Does anyone really want to pay higher taxes so school boards can pay higher wages?
It’s all the same. Take the housing perk and give it to the teachers as part of their salary.
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