Homes for teachers: If you build affordable housing, educators will come to SLO County and stay, according to the county superintendent 

The Paso Robles Joint Unified School District's $148,000 salary to replace a high school principal was no match for San Luis Obispo County's cutthroat housing market.

"We had several high-quality applicants report that for that maximum pay they just couldn't afford to live here, having checked into available housing they thought would be appropriate," Paso school district Superintendent Curt Dubost said. "It comes up with teachers as well on occasion. Most often from the teachers association demanding a pay raise."

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• Cover Image From Adobe Stock
• HOUSING NEEDED The SLO County Office of Education believes if it builds housing for educators, teachers will come.

Dubost told New Times that the district got lucky when its problem fixed itself—a local applicant had already started a life in SLO County after moving from Massachusetts prior to this year's hiring process.

But a lack of affordable housing and difficulty retaining local educators and essential workers are tied in an inscrutable knot for SLO County. The Paso school district is poised to work with the Paso Robles Housing Authority to convert surplus district-owned property into employee housing, and the SLO County Office of Education approached the county Board of Supervisors to spark something similar in other areas of the county.

On Sept. 26, supervisors unanimously approved amending some planning area standards in the county's land use ordinance. That change will make way for school district housing in the future, with a proposed project site on the east side of Highway 1 at 2450 Pennington Creek Road in SLO.

Supervisors discussed the ordinance amendment at the behest of county Superintendent James Brescia. In a letter to the board, Brescia stated that in the second quarter of 2022, only 12 percent of people seeking to purchase homes in SLO County could do so at the state's median price of $883,870. He also said that SLO County has only 1,000 affordable housing units with 6,000 households on waitlists for them.

"Individuals waiting on these lists include educators, directly impacting the ability for SLO County school districts to recruit and retain educators for the over 30,000 public schools' students in San Luis Obispo County," Brescia wrote.

Last September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2295 into law, which considers housing development projects on properties owned by local educational agencies as an allowable use. AB 2295 becomes effective on Jan. 1, 2024.

Some school districts in the state are already seeing such housing plans become a reality.

On the same day that the SLO County Board of Supervisors authorized the land use ordinance change, the Santa Barbara Unified School District permitted its staff to work on a housing project with the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara.

According to Noozhawk reporting, that project aims to build up to 45 apartments for school district employees on district-owned land.

Late last year, the South San Francisco Unified School District partnered with Landed—a company that helps educators achieve financial security and secure homeownership—to provide home buying support for eligible district employees. Paso Robles' Dubost attended the South San Francisco school district's presentation at the California Special Districts Association conference last December.

"They took advantage of a vacant property, and they enthusiastically recommended it as an option," Dubost said. "It not only made them able to recruit and retain employees but also grow a profit that they could use for other purposes."

SLO County Senior Planner Shawn Monk said he recommended the land use ordinance amendment with AB 2295 in mind. The Assembly bill lists specific criteria that make housing developments eligible on properties owned by local educational agencies.

Those projects must consist of at least 10 housing units, the property must be adjacent to another parcel that permits residential housing as the main permitted use, and the property must be located on an infill site that's entirely within the urban limit line set by local ordinance. Monk told supervisors that the County Office of Education's proposed school district housing development doesn't meet the requirements.

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• File Photo By Jayson Mellom
• NO VACANCY School districts across San Luis Obispo County are dealing with educator and administrative worker shortages aggravated by dwindling affordable housing in the area.

"The Office of Education intends to develop smaller, more rural school district housing," he said at the Sept. 26 meeting. "Because of this, land use ordinance amendment is required for the proposed project."

Spanning a 217-acre parcel, the proposed district housing project will accommodate six, 960-square-foot single-family residences, a playground, and a common gathering area. One of these six residences will comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Second District Supervisor Bruce Gibson, whose district contains the potential housing development, questioned how the project matches with the county's growth policies.

"If you look at the location ... this is not somewhere where we would normally be encouraging housing," Gibson said at the meeting. "I think it's problematic."

He encouraged county Superintendent Brescia to find alternate ways to support housing for teachers. Brescia, however, disagreed with Gibson's observations.

Brescia told the supervisor that the preferred property adjacent to Highway 1 is centrally located, placing future residents less than 45 minutes away from all but three of the 85 educational facilities in the county. The County Office of Education also chose that area because it has control over water and road access there. Moreover, a large development exceeding six residences would be incompatible for that property if the county would like to build it without taking out loans.

In his letter to supervisors, Brescia said that the proposal wasn't SLO County's first brush with employee housing. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the Office of Education used three caretaker units. The arrangement had stopped by the 1990s because of aging outdoor facilities that impacted caretaking duties.

Calling the school district housing proposal an attempt to demonstrate a prototype, Brescia said at the meeting that it was his office's way of answering a pivotal question.

"What can we do with public land with a reasonable amount of money to construct some housing?" he said. Δ

Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at [email protected].