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Thursday, December 10, 2015

If You Build Affordable Housing For Teachers, Will They Come?

If you pull into Hertford County High School in northeastern North Carolina, pass the bus circle and the soccer fields, and continue to a patch of woods, you find three, cheerful, two-story apartment buildings. Knock on any door here and you'll find the home of a teacher or employee of the local school district.

North Carolina has some of the lowest teacher salaries in the country. Combine that with a housing shortage in this rural county, and that creates a big problem. So local leaders took on both problems at once, by building affordable housing just for school district staff.

"When we started doing a study in Hertford County, we found out that there were only about 15 apartments for teachers — with the salaries that the teachers made — [that they] could live in," says James Eure, who led the school system's foundation through the financing and construction of the complex.

Eure says he hopes the project will eventually pay for itself. The rent collected from employees goes to pay back a zero-interest loan the foundation took out to build it.

Units like these can draw new teachers to the district who often can't afford to buy a house in the area, or who don't want to rent one miles away.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

An apartment built for teachers. Ok, sounds like a good idea.

But how did they prevent the Section 8 and self-disabled from elbowing their way in and displacing the teachers it was built for?

Anonymous said...

we did something similar here in da bury, except our building is home to all of our great artists

Anonymous said...

Because it's not Wicomico County

Anonymous said...

Exactly 5:26