Arizona school districts are building cheap housing developments to attract new teachers
Arizona is trying a new approach to help fill a teacher shortage by offering housing.
Low salaries and high living costs have made it difficult for educators to live where they teach.
Like so many teachers, Louisa Gamboa is sacrificing more and more for the job she loves.
That's why she lives with three other teachers in a three-bedroom home and carpools 30 minutes to her special ed classroom in Chino Valley, Arizona.
"That was the closest affordable house. Yes. Yes. And that's the only available one,” Gamboa said. “Has it been difficult making it month to month… It’s very difficult, almost nothing to spare."
The combination of low salaries and increasingly little affordable housing has worsened the teacher shortage in states like Arizona. So desperate to attract educators. Chino Valley Unified School District is breaking ground on a teacher housing project also known as a teacher-age building — 10 tiny homes behind an elementary school where teachers will pay well below the market rate for rent.
"If they can save a couple hundred dollars, I think that ultimately that could make the difference. It's a matter of money,” Jason White, a 50-year-old high school English teacher living with his parents near Phoenix, said.
White said he heard about Chino Valley’s project and applied for a job.
When asked if he’d take the Chino Valley job without the housing, White said, “I wouldn’t. And it’s not a think or not think. I simply wouldn’t because I couldn’t afford to live there.”
At least eight Arizona districts are creating their own teacher-age housing developments with some help from a federal grant.
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