Wanted: Actually Affordable Teacher Affordable Housing

 If the American dream is owning your own home and that house being the symbol of your success and hard work, well, welcome to my nightmare and my current failures. I think that might be an old dream though, and the new American dream is just finding someplace you can afford to live.  But again, welcome to my nightmare and current failures.

I recently got very excited about a news story saying that there was some affordable housing being set aside for teachers.  I am a teacher!  I need affordable housing!  I scurried to find out what to send to who to see what I could do and in the meantime google-stalked this housing and appreciated the neighborhood, the floor plans, the cute exterior of my new home.  I entered a zoom call with 74 other people in the very tight market for these 30 homes.  Still good odds, I thought.  I had about four solid minutes of watching the presentation and thinking I could get one of these homes.  Yes!  I will volunteer 200 hours to Habitat for Humanity and build other people homes!  (ooh! I will need to get a tool belt and a flannel shirt). Yes! I have money for earnest money and closing costs! (look at me! So financially responsible) Yes!  I work for this district and I am a teacher!  Yes!  Until they got to the earnings slide and I gasped and sat open-mouthed as my heart tumbled out of my mouth, splatted on the floor, and lies there still.  Y’all.  I, a teacher, do not make enough money per year to qualify for teacher affordable housing. In order to be considered for one of these houses, a family needs to make 80% of the Median Family Income.   A three-person home, which me and two kids makes three, was over $70,000.  I laugh/cried when I saw that. Then I thought, they are adults, I won’t count them.  A single-person home, the income was $55,000.  I have no trouble telling you I made $51,000 last year; my income is public record.  I make $4000 too little to qualify for teacher affordable housing.  That $51k includes two coaching stipends and a professional pathways and any other hoops offered for a little more money.

I am a college-educated, professional woman who, as a teacher, cannot afford housing set aside specifically for teachers.  How is this possible?  And if it is this bad for me, what is it like for someone who doesn’t have a college degree? Someone who makes minimum wage? Where the hell are people supposed to live? Even if I did make the $55k needed for the teacher house, the mortgage and HOA fees would leave me about $1000 a month to live on. Oh, and don't think I didn't think about how to make that work. Well, if I only eat two meals a day and my Prius lasts another ten years and we never turn the lights on and keep the AC set at 80 and so on and so on.

The kids and I are currently in an apartment that is close to my school.  Even though they are considered adults by the government, they are still very much my responsibility to house.  My lease is up in December and I am holding my breath waiting to see how much rent here will go up.  And if goes up too much, then where do we move to?  When I look at other apartments, they are just as much and more than my current apartment and this current rent is now a stretch.  

I like to play this game of “Where Can I Not Afford to Live” each night and gaze at houses and apartments Zillow says are rentable in my area.  A current find shows a duplex down the street with a back yard!  My aging dog will be so happy!  Only two bedrooms though.  Looks like someone needs to go live with dad.  Oh. And one bathroom.  Well, it can be done. Maybe not with Sophie’s IBS though. Click on price; $2300/month.  This is $500 more than I am paying for my window-deficient, slightly slanted, 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.  Last year, I had a realtor friend set up a house search for me to see other options.  I asked her to please stop the search about a week in as the results were depressing.  Many of the options seem to include living among college students and a house that had recently hosted a murder in it.  Last year, I was hopeful and didn’t know that I was a teacher who couldn’t afford affordable teacher housing.  This year, I know who I am, I know what I make and really,  I am thinking that maybe the murder house wouldn’t be so bad. 

Currently selling for about 1.2 million, as is