This story was originally published by The 19th and was republished with permission.

In the most expensive city in North Carolina, affordable housing can be hard to find — and teachers are especially hard hit. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is responding with a three-part plan to ensure district educators can make themselves at home.

The district launched the “At Home in CMS” initiative to retain and gain more teachers as it faced nearly 300 vacancies in 2024 throughout district schools. The program will offer apartments at below-rate rent, homeownership opportunities for teachers and eventually build its own housing development. CMS joins other school systems around the country grappling with rising housing costs and stagnant educator salaries.

“By investing in housing for our teachers, we’re also investing in the future success of our students,” said CMS Superintendent Crystal Hill during the program launch event.

CMS first discovered housing affordability was an issue for its educators through a district-wide survey in which half of the respondents reported spending more than 50 percent of their monthly income on their mortgage and utilities, with 61 percent of teachers saying housing may impact whether they continue to work with CMS.

Educators’ starting pay in Charlotte is $48,637 and the average rent is $1,950 a month. The average sale price of a home in Mecklenburg County is close to $577,000, according to Canopy Realtor Association. CMS teachers are strapped.

“We are working to design and support the full teacher life cycle, from our first touchpoint during recruitment through their full careers and all points — hiring, onboarding, beginning years, ongoing development, and recognition — in between,” said Jessica Saunders, media relations specialist for CMS. “At Home in CMS is crucial in helping us to recruit and retain educators, decreasing our vacancy rate and allowing our schools and our district to shift our focus on supporting the excellent ones we have here in CMS.”

In a study last year, the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research group that works to ensure every child has an effective teacher, found that teachers are unable to afford housing in many metropolitan areas — like Charlotte. This issue has exacerbated staffing challenges at school districts across the country, increased eviction fillings and exceeded the record number of people unhoused.

These harsh effects of rising housing costs are impacting women educators the most.

Seventy-seven percent of K-12 public school teachers are women, according to the National Center for Education Statistics for the 2020-2021 school year, the most recent year available. This gender imbalance in education leaves more women than ever choosing between their careers and housing.  

The CMS plan aims to create housing stability for educators across the city as the district partners with developers to rent below-market-rate units to CMS employees at 34 of the most high-need schools. The program will also assist employees with finding existing down payment assistance programs that lead to homeownership, working to retain even more educators who once had plans to leave the profession.

In 2022, a survey from the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the country that represents public school personnel, found that more than 55 percent of their members reported they were planning to leave the profession earlier than expected.

“All students deserve a caring, qualified and committed teacher in their classroom. Unfortunately, inadequate pay, the rising cost of living, and skyrocketing student debt have made it much more difficult to attract and retain educators because they cannot afford to stay in the education profession they love,” NEA President Becky Pringle told The 19th.

CMS continues to advocate for salary increases for its teachers and says they “are doing what they can here to keep more money in teachers’ pockets and deliver a stronger experience for them,” Saunders said. “We are seeking to make living in our district more affordable, so that those who want to teach in CMS can also afford to live here.”

In the future, CMS plans to build a $30 million rental community for educators with close to 100 units. The district has not yet selected a location for the community, but its goal is to break ground in 2025 and start leasing to teachers by 2027.  

“We as CMS won’t be making those decisions in terms of who gets in and who gets put on a waitlist, but there will be an appropriate process for that,” Nancy Brightwell, the chief of recruitment and retention at CMS, said during the program launch event.

Not all CMS educators approve of the new housing initiative, with some teachers calling the plan offensive and a “slap in the face” because they see low salaries as the root of the problem, according to reporting by The Charlotte Observer and WCNC.

The district also views teacher salaries as an issue, Hill said, and she’s working at the state level for an increase in her educators’ pay.

Other CMS teachers believe that any aid is helpful at this point. Genita Nashville, a middle-school teacher in Charlotte, told WCNC Charlotte at the unveiling of the initiative that the assistance would be life-changing for her family.

“With more manageable housing costs, I can save for summer trips [and] medications for my son who has moderate asthma,” Nashville said.

While a housing community solely for teachers is new to Charlotte, it is not the first of its kind.

Similar concepts to tackle teacher shortages and address housing affordability have been popping up across school districts nationally. California has been leading the charge with housing developments for educators in places like Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Jefferson Union. CMS administrators traveled to Santa Clara to explore how their complexes serve teachers.

The Santa Clara Unified School District has provided housing for its teachers since 2001. Over time the district has constructed close to 70 units for educators to live in and has helped teachers save for homeownership. The district reduced rent to 80 percent of the market rate, which CMS is also planning to do.

“While there has been a trend of school districts providing subsidized housing or other affordable housing to attract teachers, housing incentives do not replace paying educators a competitive salary that compensates them for the professionals they are,” Pringle said.

Since the “At Home in CMS” program launched, the school system has received more than 150 teacher applications from six schools.

“Educators, parents and communities are coming together to demand long-term solutions to long-term problems to ensure that every student has what they need to succeed,” Pringle said. “We must start by addressing the chronic underfunding of the education profession and make a commitment to all educators, including substitutes and education support professionals, that they will have the competitive salaries and benefits needed to support their families.”

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Header image by Florian Schmid on Unsplash