SANTA CRUZ >> Santa Cruz City Schools has begun sizing up sites to build housing for its struggling workforce, though determining funding options remains on the back burner.
The Santa Cruz City Schools Board of Education unanimously voted on Wednesday to spend $22,500 to hire Dublin-based real estate firm Dutra Cerro Graden, Inc. for a first-phase feasibility study, taking a high-level look at what land is available in the north, east and western portions of the county over seven weeks.
“It’s really sad, what’s happening in our housing market,” board President Deb Tracy-Proulx said this week. “We see people who have been in the community for a long time being priced out — rentals — and they can’t even rent, let alone buy a home.”
Tracy-Proulx stressed that no funding options, including discussions of a new bond measure, were explored at Wednesday’s school board meeting.
A districtwide survey of educators and non-teaching staff in February revealed that nearly a quarter of workers spend more than half their income on housing. Tracy-Proulx said the most significant impetus behind launching the housing development study is teacher retention.
“Teacher salaries just cannot keep up with cost of living,” Tracy-Proulx said. “We have teachers commuting, we have teachers teaching out of the area because they can’t afford homes on their salaries, and vice versa.”
Robert Chacanaca, president of the Santa Cruz City Schools Council of Classified Employees, said the housing crisis hits more than just teachers, and he welcomes discussion of new workforce housing opportunities. Within the trade industries, local workers are moving to and buying homes in cities such as Fresno, Merced and “even Los Banos,” said Chacanaca, who also serves as president of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council AFL–CIO. The housing problem has been on his radar for at least the past 10 years, Chacanaca said.
“Our salaries are lower than teacher salaries, and we’re also experiencing the same as the teacher shortage — the classified, we’re seeing the same high turnover, because people can’t afford to live in Santa Cruz and are moving on,” Chacanaca said. “What’s been the most recent experience is the only people who are staying with the district, like myself, have been here for 15-plus years. Everybody else can’t afford to stay here.”
Chacanaca said his union’s food service workers are heavily impacted, as his union’s lowest paid workers. Already, not enough job-seekers are applying for openings, he said.
“Although our benefits are good — that is one saving grace — your benefits don’t buy your housing,” Chacanaca said. “So what good are your benefits, if you don’t have affordable housing.”
MOVING FORWARD
Should the district continue after the study’s first phase, the consultant will narrow the district’s choices to three, and later one, potential site, offering financial analysis and recommended funding opportunities at later stages. In Dutra Cerro Graden’s project description, the consultant states that the funding gap between development costs and funding sources “is typically a significant cost.”
General funding options can include bonds, conventional bank loans, leasing the development site to a hand-selected builder for a nominal fee instead of bidding out the project, public grants, certificates of participation, where an investor purchases a share of the lease revenues of the development and partnerships with for-profit builder for joint use or occupancy.
Casey Carlson, Greater Santa Cruz Federation of Teachers union president, said she has watched the housing market situation deteriorate in recent years. Where once the impact was limited mainly to hiring new teachers — potential educators would either turn down the job outright or leave shortly after being hired due to lack of housing options — Carlson is now seeing an expanding problem. Even experienced teachers, she said, are losing their housing due to evictions and Airbnb conversions. The teachers union is working directly with district administrators to seek teacher options, such as workforce housing, said Carlson.
“We’re seen more teachers leaving to go live in areas, even close by, like Salinas, places that are going to have slightly more affordable rent,” Carlson said. “We have to be realistic in saying that this is just one part of a solution, because clearly it’s not going to house everyone who needs affordable housing. But it’s certainly a good start in that direction.”
The workforce housing study approval is one of several local approaches toward recruiting and retaining school district workers, said Superintendent Kris Munro. In February, the school district heard a presentation from Landed, a company that helps rally investors to support employee workforce home buying through mortgage down payment assistance. The district also remains in a near-constant recruitment phase, working to anticipate vacancies as far out as a year early, Munro said.
