SAN DIEGO — As San Diego continues to cope with a shortage of teachers, one of the biggest challenges to recruiting new educators is our area's steep housing costs.
One solution that's now being floated: building hundreds of affordable rental units, specifically for San Diego Unified School District workers.
Whether this idea moves forward, though, will be decided at the ballot box.
Governor Newsom recently signed legislation making it easier for school districts in California to build affordable housing for their teachers and other employees.
It's a move that San Diego unified plans to make, at the site of its current district headquarters in University Heights, provided that Bond Measure U passes next week.
"What Measure U does is continue the work we've been doing for over a decade now," said San Diego Unified Board Trustee Richard Barrera.
Measure U would generate $3.2 billion: money that would be used for much-needed repairs and upgrades of existing schools and other district facilities as well as fund new construction.
This would includes $226 million that would go toward affordable rental housing for lower-paid district employees, initially on the eight-acre site of current district headquarters. Those headquarters will be re-locating to Kearny Mesa in the next few years, Barrera said.
"This will allow us to build 500 units of affordable housing," he told CBS 8, "especially for our younger educators who are coming in to the profession but who struggle to be able to afford rent."
Rents would be no more than 30% of an employee's income.
Barrera said that the rising cost of housing should not be a roadblock to aspiring educators who want to work in San Diego.
"We can say to young people, we can help you," he added, "help you in the early part of your career with an affordable place to live."
Down the road, there are also plans for additional affordable housing at the site of Central Elementary in City Heights, which is moving to combine with Wilson Middle School.
This concept for affordable housing for school district employees is already successfully underway in other part of the state.
"I was absolutely blown away," said Jonathan Krupp, who teaches in Daly City in the Bay Area, where a 122-unit apartment complex, approved by local voters there, has been built for teachers and staff on school district property. Rents are about half the going market rate.
"There are no words to describe it," Krupp said. "I think that this gives teachers hope."
Here in San Diego, if Measure U passes, San Diegans would not see their taxes increase, because its adoption would coincide with a past bond measure's expiration.
"So whatever you're paying no in property taxes to support our schools is what you will continue to do," Barrera said.
If Measure U passes, construction on affordable housing units on the site of current district headquarters is expected to be completed within the next three years or so.
WATCH RELATED: Measure U: $3.2 billion bond measure for San Diego Unified on the ballot (Sep. 2022).
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