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By Chris Chiang
MVWSD’s teacher project is no longer teacher housing, at best it will be school non-teaching staff and general community housing under the current affordable housing income restrictions. On March 6, the board will consider the further investment of buying the land under the project.
Of the 144 units that MVWSD built for $88 million with an additional $1.9 million annual land lease, only 37 units are truly affordable for teachers. And even for those, most MVWSD teachers make too much to qualify because they need to make no more than 80% of the regional median income. A single teacher can only qualify for 80% median income for, at most, their first six years, and if they have a working partner, they cannot qualify even in their first year teaching.
Of the remaining 107 units, the rental rate is above what teachers want to pay. For these units, which are available to those earning up to 120% of the regional median income, a one-bedroom is $2,900 a month. Teachers will opt for older, cheaper market rate apartments in Mountain View at that rate, as was reported by the teacher representative at the Feb. 27 housing meeting in expressing how “disheartening” it was to discover most MVWSD teachers don’t qualify for more affordable 80% units in MVWSD’s teacher housing.
If MVWSD lowers the rent for the 107 units, it may take general student revenue to offset the deficit, a reality that is nothing close to breaking even or achieving $500,000 in excess income that the past superintendent promised the board that approved this in 2018. This project was supposed to meet the “missing middle” of housing, for those earning between 80% and 120% median income, yet MVWSD has replicated a traditional affordable housing project (with only 80% and 120%), doing nothing to help teachers in the missing middle, and worse, expending its own district staff and board time and further financial resources.
There are ways forward, and MVWSD must have the courage to explore before rushing ahead. Since the 2018 initiation of MVWSD teacher housing, new state laws have given school districts new tools to make teacher housing possible. AB 2295 allows schools to build teacher housing on their property without further city approval as long as it meets existing local zoning requirements. AB 1157 allows schools to sell land it owns in order to purchase other land for teacher housing.
If MVWSD is going to pursue buying the land under its current 144 units, the school board must demand that MVWSD be free from the affordable housing restrictions placed on the project, so that all 144 units can be priced to meet its teachers in the missing middle. It is maddening that a housing project is paid by the school district, and yet MVWSD can’t even set its own requirements to house its teachers there.
If MVWSD cannot free itself of the current 80%/120% median income limits, it must at the very least demand that MVWSD teachers who at first qualify to move in at 80% are permitted to stay for much longer than the current rules would allow. The current plan is to allow teachers who begin making too much during their residency to only stay for one additional year, or pay the 120% rate. Provide teachers a three- to five-year grace period, to give the few new MVWSD teachers who are eligible under 80% some certainty that they won’t be forced to move or priced out so soon.
If MVWSD is going to buy land for teacher housing, all the while still limited by affordable housing requirements, it should consider selling land it’s not using to the city, otherwise it’s maddening for MVWSD to buy land with the loan obligations and/or cancellations of other projects that would entail, when it’s one of the few school districts with several existing surplus properties.
If MVWSD cannot find a way to do anything similar to that, it needs to stop spending a single extra dollar on a project that, without change, will not be housing many teachers, and transfer this project to some affordable housing agency. This project already doesn’t meet Measure T, if this affordable housing for the community, a worthy thing to have, call it what it is, and hand it over to organizations who do that as their expertise.
Chris Chiang is a former Mountain View Whisman school board trustee.
Adjusting income qualifications to 140 or 150% is something easy the city can do. The city does want affordable housing success stories. MVWSD should have already asked the city to make that adjustment so it could match the other teacher housing project 231 Grant road in Palo Alto.
Unfortunately, the district’s current Chief Financial Officer Westover has given this district a reputation of doing bad deals, & handing out questionable contracts. The same people who helped ruin relationships with the city (Westover/Conley) are now a liability & hindering opportunities to attract funding from the city, county & private partnerships.