Above: San Francisco housing, photograph by Justin Sullivan for Getty Images.
The number of vacancies in San Francisco school districts increase with cost of living, as teachers are forced to make stressful commutes or find work elsewhere
Soaring rents in San Francisco are pushing school teachers out of the city they work in, union officials fear, causing high turnover rates and reducing the time teachers are able to spend in the classroom because of long commutes.
Teachers union officials say the number of vacancies in San Francisco school districts has grown higher and higher each year, as the tech boom has transformed the housing market, making the city unaffordable even to veteran teachers.
“I hear every day of another teacher leaving,” said Lita Blanc, the head of United Educators of San Francisco, the city’s teachers and teaching paraprofessionals union. “The cost of living is the No 1 reason.”
Housing is considered affordable if you can spend under 30% of your income on it, according to federal guidelines. By those standards, no one making the average teacher’s wage of $69,400 a year in San Francisco could afford a one-bedroom rental, for which the median price is $3,500, in any of the city’s neighborhoods. The starting salary for public school teachers is $50,000.
Jake Harris, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher, used to live close to his school in the Mission District. When his landlord decided to move back into the apartment Harris rented, he and his partner tried to stay in San Francisco, but found they couldn’t afford anything bigger than a studio.
“I feel like I’m getting to the age where you should have something to show for your work,” Harris said. “You go to school, have a career, you should have something to show for it.”
They settled on a relatively spacious one-bedroom apartment in the nearby city of Berkeley for $2,300 a month. His commute via Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) trains takes an hour or more. That means he has to wake up by 5.15am each weekday, and he’s often not home again for another 12 or 13 hours.
Harris said 12 of the 35 teachers at his school were new this year. The high turnover and increased stress from his commute weighs on him and his students.
“I don’t get enough sleep. It’s hard on my patience,” he said. “From an emotional standpoint, it’s not sustainable for me. At the end of the day, your brain is fried when you’re dealing with seven- and eight-year olds … It’s also bad for them, not being able to provide some stability for them.”
According to the teachers union, about 65% of the city’s teachers live within San Francisco limits, down from just above 70% a few years ago. The rest live in Oakland, Berkeley and farther-flung suburbs.
Yohanna Roldan, a 26-year-old Spanish immersion teacher in the Mission is weighing whether to go to one of those suburbs, or leave the area completely. She had been paying about $1,000 for a room in a house with four other roommates. But just a few weeks ago her landlord told her he’d been offered $2m in cash for the house, and that Roldan and her roommates would have to be out by October. Otherwise, he said, their rent would double.
“I want to be able to see the kids I teach graduate. I love this community,” she said. “But basically we’re getting pushed out. My worst-case scenario is moving back home with my parents to San Jose, so I would leave the city and go find a job there. There are plenty of schools I could teach at.”
Mayor Ed Lee’s office did not return calls for comment, but the mayor has been criticized by housing activists in the city, who say his plans to create 30,000 housing units by 2020 will not create enough affordable housing for middle- and low-income renters.
“We need more housing for all types and for all income levels,” said Gabriel Metcalf, the president of Spur, the city’s biggest pro-development thinktank. “What I worry about is that all the solutions will take time, so we might not have time before we lose the core teaching staff from our schools.”
The teachers union has recommended using school district land to create housing specifically for teachers, but it’s unclear whether the district or city would be responsive to that idea.
Even those who have managed to find relatively affordable housing feel as if they’re in “golden handcuffs” – unable to leave their apartments and begin building a life in the city.
Emily is a 30-year-old teacher who lives with her partner in a 225 square-foot studio in the heart of the city. She did not want her last name used for fear she’d be evicted if her landlord found out her partner lived with her. She said she’s lucky: her apartment is rent-controlled. But she and her partner are starting to think about their future, and more often than not, that future looks better outside of San Francisco.
“I grew up in a family of teachers and I always felt it was a profession where I could have the lifestyle I was used to growing up in,” she said. “But if we have a kid they would have to sleep on our coffee table. It’s like we’re living in college still. I’ve got maybe two years max before I’ll be at a breaking point.”