With the continued rise in Bay Area housing prices, many teachers and educational staff need help to find housing they can afford with their salaries. Peninsula school districts are having trouble attracting staff as a result. Now, some of them — including those serving Pacifica — are doing something about that.
Pacifica School District is working to join the Jefferson Union High School District in constructing low-income housing units built specifically for educational staff. The new housing would be built on Oddstad Boulevard, at the site of a former elementary school.
For the past seven years, Pacifica School District has been working on its plan. The district, which serves younger students, has had to take a lot of community input into consideration.
“The immediate neighbors, originally, as with any project, were concerned about building and construction,” said Elizabeth Bredall, a trustee for the Pacifica School District. “There was originally concern whether they would lose the soccer field but we're dedicated to keeping the soccer fields anyway,”
Bredall has been involved in the project’s development for the entire seven years. She mentioned that there were environmental impacts that the board had to take into consideration. Despite the concerns, the district was able to confirm a total of 70 residences for all types of employees under the district.
“We are going to focus on hard-to-fill positions. So all across the country, there's a shortage of special ed teachers. Every district is facing it. And tons of people would love to live in Pacifica and would love to work here, but they recognize that they can't afford to live here based on the high cost of housing and so we hope that this will help us recruit more,” explained Heather Olsen the superintendent of the Pacifica School District.
Olsen and Bredall hope that this housing development will bring in more staff into their schools and give them a chance at owning their own home in the area as well.
“I think people would love to live in the Bay Area, but as soon as they recognize how expensive that is, it just becomes very, very challenging. This is going to be more and more of an issue across the state of California,” said Olsen.
Construction is set for this year after years of planning and working around community requests. The board has even added improvements to the community-loved soccer fields including a snack bar and changing rooms. The units themselves will be available for district employees and a separate board will be elected to help sort through applicants.
“This is the future to attract teachers and to hopefully keep them in their positions. And we're trying to do everything we can to just make a better work environment for them,” said Bredall.
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