The Elusive Teacher Next Door

In San Francisco, the average one-bedroom apartment rents for over $3,000 a month. When I first heard that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, inspired by the story of a homeless teacher, intends to allocate $44 million toward housing for public-school teachers, I imagined the Tyrell Corporation headquarters protruding from the center of an empty parking lot on the outskirts of the city. Each night, an army of tired teachers would slide into a few thousand utilitarian capsules wedged into its futuristic façade—skinny beds, hot plates, shared bathrooms, low ceilings.

The plan: a 130- to 150-unit building in a district with more than 3,600 full-time teachers who could, if a similar experiment in Los Angeles is any indication, actually end up earning too much to even qualify for the housing. While it’s unlikely to fix the problem, it’s certainly noble in spirit.

Both teachers and students benefit when teachers can live in the communities they serve, and when school districts nationwide look to hold on to priced-out teachers, from to o , they’re increasingly