California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond has unveiled a plan to build up to 2.3 million units of housing for teachers on surplus land owned by school districts across the state.
The Los Angeles Daily News reports that Thurmond's goal is to address the teacher shortage and the affordable housing shortage by offering reasonably priced units to educators and staff who cannot afford to live where they work.
“While we are working on strategies to help increase educator pay, building educator housing helps districts work through staffing shortages that threaten the success of our students,” Thurmond said at Tuesday’s press conference. “We believe this effort is a critical solution for tacking the housing crisis, the educator shortage, and for providing key resources that will ultimately drive student success.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District is one of the school systems in California that has built affordable housing for staff and educators. It offers 185 units across three developments and is looking at eight potential sites for future housing projects.
A University of California Berkeley study found that local educational agencies own about 750,000 acres of underutilized land, enough to accommodate Thurmond’s ambitious target of 2.3 million units. A significant portion of the surplus land can be attributed to declining public school enrollment, which has led to the closing of buildings and school sites.
Thurmond says he intends to gather education leaders and developers for a housing summit on Aug. 14 to kickstart his housing initiative.
