Pacifica school district looks to provide housing for teachers
By Julia Scott
San Mateo County Times
Article Last Updated: 11/11/2008 08:20:20 PM PST
PACIFICA — New teachers are often attracted to Coastside schools because of their small-town atmosphere and proximity to nature. But they don't always stay long, mostly because of the area's high cost of living.
In his 10 years on the Pacifica School District Board of Trustees, Mike O'Neill has seen it happen too many times. Unable to compete for teachers with school districts in wealthier parts of San Mateo County, O'Neill and his fellow board members are devising a plan to help them afford life in Pacifica without a giant pay hike. "We are one of the lowest-paying districts in the county and we are going to end up with a large number of baby boomers who will be retiring in the next few years. In order to attract and retain the replacement teachers, we need a hook to keep them here," O'Neill said.
The idea they came up with is remarkable for its simplicity: Build affordable housing for teachers at the site of a former school. Give teachers a chance to work where they live, cut down on their commutes and allow them to put down roots in Pacifica. With many cities on the Peninsula struggling to meet minimum affordable-housing requirements mandated by the Association of Bay Area Governments, school districts such as Pacifica's still hope to avoid pricing school staff members out of the community. If Pacifica school officials see their ideas move forward, they may end up basing them on the recent construction of College Vista, a 44-unit apartment complex recently built at College of San Mateo to house college faculty and staff in the San Mateo Union High School District and the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District, rented out for $1,500 a month or less.
The San Mateo County Community College District is reportedly working on a plan to build a 60-unit apartment complex on a parking lot behind Cañada College, between Woodside and Redwood City. The idea has also struck a chord with the Cabrillo Unified School District, whose board members have been eyeing a vacant 25-acre parcel in El Granada near the Half Moon Bay Airport as a potential site for affordable teacher housing. "It's got water connections and it's vacant land," Cabrillo school district board member Charlie Gardner said of the property, which abuts other homes and is owned by the school district. "It's important that we have affordable housing for teachers to retain them on the coast. There doesn't seem to be a lot of movement by any entity to move that along." The school board will receive a presentation by the end of the year from its Assets Committee, which has been taking an inventory of all surplus school properties and their moneymaking possibilities.
Cities across the Bay Area are required to respond to the Association for Bay Area Governments' call for low- and moderate-income housing at a time when, at least in San Mateo County, existing home prices remain high. According to a report released in 2007, only 12 percent of Bay Area households could afford a median priced home in San Mateo County. ABAG projects the need for 214,500 new housing units between today and 2014, and many Peninsula cities have had trouble even laying ground toward fulfilling their affordable-housing quota. Pacifica will need to build 161 moderate- or low-income housing units by 2014, the same amount as Half Moon Bay.
If Pacifica's Oddstad School does get converted into housing, it will — in a sense — be fulfilling its destiny. The school was hurriedly built in 1954 by well-known suburb developer Andres F. Oddstad Jr. to handle the overwhelming demand for schooling created by the enormous Linda Mar subdivision he created there. The Oddstad School was created from a string of tract houses that were meant to be demolished to make room for more houses when a more suitable public school could be built elsewhere; the land is zoned residential and was originally subdivided into 56 individual parcels. But the school was closed a few years ago and folded into another school because of declining enrollment. There are some questions about how affordable the new homes would be —for the school district, that is — once it foregoes the $150,000 it currently earns by renting the property out. O'Neill also wonders how many young teachers would be willing to live deep in Linda Mar Valley in close quarters with seniors and other local workers who might move in. Students would still have access to a soccer field next to the school. "A lot of these teachers are 22, 23, 24," he said. "Why would they want to live in Pacifica with all these families when they could be in San Francisco and party at night?"
Julia Scott: 650-348-4340 or julia.scott@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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